Balares

The Balares were an ancient people of Sardinia.

Pausanias in his work Periegesis speculated that the Balares were the descendants of the Iberian and African mercenaries of Carthage, adding that in the language of the Corsi "Balares" mean fugitives.

Some of the Carthaginian mercenaries, either Libyans or Iberians, quarrelled about the booty, mutinied in a passion, and added to the number of the highland settlers. Their name in the Cyrnian (Corsican) language is Balari, which is the Cyrnian word for fugitives.

In the Historiae Sallust mention a possible origin from the city of Palla, Corsica.

Archaeologist Giovanni Ugas proposed that they derived from the first wave of the Beaker people who settled in the island in the late Copper age from the Franco-Iberian area and that they were related with the ancient peoples of the Balearic Islands; their name has been connected with that of Bálaro, a chief of the Vettones. According to Ugas, during the Nuragic period the Balares lived in the whole north-western part of the island (Nurra, Anglona, Sassarese); their territory bordered with the Ilienses in the south (Tirso) and with the Corsi in the north-east (Mount Limbara).

After the punic and Roman occupation of Sardinia, part of the Balares, along with the Ilienses and the Corsi, retreated in the mountainous region called Barbagia to resist the invaders. In 177 BC, the Balares and Ilienses revolted against the Romans but they were defeated by the legions of Tiberius Gracchus the Elder.

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