Sardus was an ancient mythological hero of the nuragic

Nuragic civilization

The Nuragic civilization was a civilization of Sardinia, lasting from the Bronze Age to the 2nd century AD. The name derives from its most characteristic monuments, the nuraghe. They consist of tower-fortresses, built starting from about 1800 BC...

 mythology. Sardus appears in the writings of Sallust

Sallust

Gaius Sallustius Crispus, generally known simply as Sallust , a Roman historian, belonged to a well-known plebeian family, and was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines...

 and Pausanias.

Ancient sources

According with Sallust, Sardus generated by Hercules

Hercules

Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...

, left Libya along with a great multitude of men and occupied Sardinia

Sardinia

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...

, the island called it by its name. Later Pausanias confirm the story of Sallust and in the II sec a.C. writes that Sardus was the son of Makeris (identificable with Melqart

Melqart

Melqart, properly Phoenician Milk-Qart "King of the City", less accurately Melkart, Melkarth or Melgart , Akkadian Milqartu, was tutelary god of the Phoenician city of Tyre as Eshmun protected Sidon. Melqart was often titled Ba‘l Ṣūr "Lord of Tyre", the ancestral king of the royal line...

, the Libyan Hercules) and that the island of Sardinia changed is name from Ichnusa to Sardinia in honor of Sardus.