[♦] Placed in alphabetical order.
Sardi, the inhabitants of Sardinia. See: [Sardinia].
Sardĭnia, the greatest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily, is situate between Italy and Africa, at the south of Corsica. It was originally called Sandaliotis, or Ichnusa, from its resembling the human foot (ἰχνος), and it received the name of Sardinia from Sardus, a son of Hercules, who settled there with a colony which he had brought with him from Libya. Other colonies, under Aristæus, Norax, and Iolas, also settled there. The Carthaginians were long masters of it, and were dispossessed by the Romans in the Punic wars, B.C. 231. Some call it, with Sicily, one of the granaries of Rome. The air was very unwholesome, though the soil was fertile, in corn, in wine, and oil. Neither wolves nor serpents are found in Sardinia, nor any poisonous herb, except one, which, when eaten, contracts the nerves, and is attended with a paroxysm of laughter, the forerunner of death; hence risus Sardonicus, Sardous. Cicero, Letters to his Friends, bk. 7, ch. 25.—Servius, on Virgil, bk. 7, eclogue 41.—Tacitus, Annals, bk. 2, ch. 85.—Mela, bk. 3, ch. 7.—Strabo, bks. 2 & 5.—Cicero, On Pompey’s Command; Letters to his brother Quintus, bk. 2, ltr. 3.—Pliny, bk. 3, ch. 7.—Pausanias, bk. 10, ch. 17.—Varro, de Re Rustica.—Valerius Maximus, bk. 7, ch. 6.
Sardica, a town of Thrace, at the north of mount Hæmus.
Sardis, or Sardes, now Sart, a town of Asia Minor, the capital of the kingdom of Lydia, situate at the foot of mount Tmolus, on the banks of the Pactolus. It is celebrated for the many sieges it sustained against the Cimmerians, Persians, Medes, Macedonians, Ionians, and Athenians, and for the battle in which, B.C. 262, Antiochus Soter was defeated by Eumenes king of Pergamus. It was destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of Tiberius, who ordered it to be rebuilt. It fell into the hands of Cyrus, B.C. 548, and was burnt by the Athenians, B.C. 504, which became the cause of the invasion of Attica by Darius. Plutarch, Alexander.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 11, lis. 137, 152, &c.—Strabo, bk. 13.—Herodotus, bk. 1, ch. 7, &c.
Sardones, the people of Roussilon in France, at the foot of the Pyrenees. Pliny, bk. 3, ch. 4.
Sardus, a son of Hercules, who led a colony to Sardinia and gave it his name.
Sarephta, a town of Phœnicia between Tyre and Sidon, now Sarfand.
Sariaster, a son of Tigranes king of Armenia, who conspired against his father, &c. Valerius Maximus, bk. 9, ch. 11.
Sariphi, mountains at the east of the Caspian.