Sardinia.

Max Dashu:

> Well, Sardinia was a big island, and we know from Strabo
> et alia that its people were able to fend off
> Carthaginian and Roman colonists from its highland
> interior. So Romanization came late.

I have a memory of reading somewhere someplace that the problem with
Sardinia is mosquito-borne disease in the Sardinian lowlands (malaria,
I think). Would-be conquerors suffered like Napoleon trying to take
back Haiti.

Sardinian (the modern Romance language), so I've read, is different
from the others in the Romance group, conserving some remarkable
archaisms from Vulgar Latin.