Balares

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.

[2] 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;[3] their name has been connected with that of Balarus, a chief of the Vettones.

[3] 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.

The Ilienses, reinforced by auxiliaries of the Balari, had attacked the province while it was at peace, and could not be resisted since the army was weak and had lost a large number of its members as a result of a pestilence.Strabo in the Geographica mention them among the "nations of mountaineers" that raided the Italian coast.