Tibula (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: , Ptol.), was an ancient town of

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

, near the northern extremity of the island, which appears to have been the customary landing-place for travelers coming from

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; for which reason the Itineraries give no less than four lines of route, taking their departure from Tibula as a starting-point. (Itin. Ant. pp. 78–83.)

Location

Its position is a matter of great uncertainty. That assigned to it by

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

would place it on the site of Castelsardo (

province of Sassari The province of Sassari (; ; ; ; ) was a province in the autonomous island region of Sardinia, Italy. Its capital was the city of Sassari. On 1 April 2025, the province was suppressed in favor of the new Metropolitan City of Sassari, which corres ...

) on the north coast of the island, and only about 30 km from

Porto Torres Porto Torres (; ) is a (municipality) and a city of the Province of Sassari in north-west of Sardinia, Italy. Founded during the 1st century BC as , it was the first Roman colony of the entire Sardinia, island. It is situated on the coast at abo ...

, but this is wholly incompatible with the statements of the Itineraries, and must certainly be erroneous. Indeed, Ptolemy himself places the Tibulati or Tibulates or Tibulatii (), who must have been closely connected with the town of that name, in the extreme north of the island (Ptol. iii. 3. § 6), and all the data derived from the Itineraries concur in the same result. The position assigned it by De la Marmora, and adopted by Smith is the port or small bay called Porto di Lungo Sardo, almost close to the northernmost point of the island, the Errebantium Promontorium of Ptolemy. (De la Marmora, ''Voy. en Sardaigne'', vol. ii. pp. 421–32, where the whole question is fully examined and discussed.) The editors of the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World place Tibula at Santa Teresa Gallura (

province of Olbia-Tempio The province of Olbia-Tempio (; ; ) was a province in the autonomous region of Sardinia, Italy. It had two provincial capitals, Olbia (58,723 inhabitants) and Tempio Pausania (14,342 inhabitants). As of 2015, the province had a total population o ...

References

* * {{coord missing, Italy Lost ancient cities and towns Former populated places in Sardinia