a time when even in North Africa the script was neo-Punic; Punic-style magistrates, the sufetes, wielded local control in Nora and Tharros through the end of the first century B.C., although two sufetes existed in Bithia as late as the mid-second century CE. Overall, Sardinia was quite disliked by the Romans and, as isolated as it was kept, Romanization proceeded at a relatively slow pace. During the Roman rule, there was a considerable immigration flow from the Italian peninsula into the island; ancient sources mention several populations of Italic origin settling down in Sardinia, like the Patulcenses Campani (from Campania), the Falisci (from southern Etruria), the Buduntini (from Apulia) and the Siculenses (from Sicily); Roman colonies were also established in Porto Torres (Turris Libisonis) and Uselis. The Italic immigrants were confronted with a difficult coexistence with the natives, who were reluctant to assimilate to the language and customs of the colonists; many aspects of the ancient Sardo-Punic culture are documented to have persisted well into Imperial times, and the mostly mountainous innerlands came to earn the name of Barbaria ("Land of the Barbarians", similar in origin to the word Barbary) as a testament of the fiercely independent spirit of the tribes who dwelled therein (in fact, they would continue to practice their indigenous prehistoric religion up until the age of Pope Gregory I). Nevertheless, Sardinia would eventually undergo cultural Romanization, the modern Sardinian language being one of the most evident cultural developments thereof. Strabo gave a brief summary about the Mountaineer tribes, living in what would be called civitates Barbariae, Geographica V ch.2:There are four nations of mountaineers, the Parati, Sossinati, Balari, and the Aconites. These people dwell in caverns. Although they have some arable land, they neglect its cultivation, preferring rather to plunder what they find cultivated by others, whether on the island or on the continent, where they make descents, especially upon the Pisatæ. The prefects sent [into Sardinia] sometimes resist them, but at other times leave them alone, since it would cost too dear to maintain an army always on foot in an unhealthy place. Like any other subjects of the Empire, Sardinians too would be granted Roman citizenship in 212 AD with the Constitutio Antoniniana by Caracalla. Middle Ages After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Sardinia was ruled in rapid succession by the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Ostrogoths and again by the Byzantines, when