## 2 Historical and Archaeological Evidences  
In the Middle Ages the writers [PERSON] (7 th century) and [PERSON] (12 th century), cited the temple of _[PERSON]_ in their geographical works written using ancient sources, placing the temple along a road between _SulKi_ (Sant'Antioco) and _Neapolis_ (Guspini-_Santa Maria de Nabui_) [1]. In 1580 the scholar and bishop of Sassari, [PERSON] placed the temple of _[PERSON]_ on the \"Caput Neapolis\", that is, on today's Capo Pecora promontory. Thirty years later, based on the data of [PERSON], the Dutch geographer [PERSON] placed the temple on Capo Frasca, the promontory delimiting the Gulf of Oristano to the South. Given that the ruins of the temple were not found, [PERSON] also reinterpreted [PERSON]'s scripts suggesting that he had not mentioned a temple (ieron), but a promontory (akron) dedicated to the divinity; this hypothesis was soon discarded [1]. The search for the _[PERSON]_ temple subsided in the 18 th century, when various scholars concentrated exclusively on the study of the coin struck in Sardinia with the effigy of a deity, and resumed in 1825 with [PERSON], who was uncertain about the location of the temple between Capo Pecora and Capo Frasca. The latter location was also indicated in the same period by the Piarist [PERSON], who suggested a second possible location at the top of Monte Arcuentu, in the Guspinese [1]. In 1838 General [PERSON], during his journey through the island for drafting of the work \"Voyage en Sardaigne\" [40], arrived in the Riu Antas valley and recognized the remains of a temple and fragments of columns and capitals dispersed in the forest and covered by vegetation (Figure 2). He noticed that the base of the building was mainly intact, even if invaded by a forest of oak trees which accelerated its destruction. In 1840, following the publication (in 1839) of the temple reliefs of the architect [PERSON] (Figure 3) and a partial reading of the epigraph, [PERSON] attributed the temple to [PERSON] (138-161 AD) or [PERSON] (161-180 AD). In this case, the General [PERSON] identified it as a Roman construction, belonging to the class of tetrastyle temples due to the presence of four columns placed in front of the pronaos, on the sides of which there were another column and two corner pillars. The finding suggested that the temple was to be an extra-urban sanctuary in the territory of the mining town of _Metalla_, mentioned in the _Itinerarium Antonini_, located between _Neapolis_ and _Sulki_[1, 4, 40, 41]. Even if the route of the Roman road indicated in the Itinerarium cannot be accurately reconstructed, the thirty Roman miles (45 km) of the _Neapolis-Metalla_ stretch and the _Metalla-Sulki_ stretch lead to locate _Metalla_ at Fluminimaggiore, the municipality of the Antas site. This idea seemed to be supported by the discovery, in some localities of the island, of a Roman coin from the second half of the 1 st century BC, which carried on the reverse side a tetrastyle temple, identified with the Temple of Antas, and the letter M, considered the abbreviation by _Metalla_[1]. In 1858, the canon [PERSON] and [PERSON] carried out more detailed research but without carrying out excavations. Studies concerning the temple resumed from the late 19 th century, a period in which the epigraphist [PERSON] and [PERSON] reported the inception to the princedom of the emperor [PERSON] (180-192 AD) [1]. Only in the early 1960s of the 20 th century, the researcher [PERSON], analysing two small quadrangular environments, which closed the _sacellum_ on the short northwestern side, understood that the building technique used in the temple was different from that used for structures under the access steps; thus he hypothesized the Punic origin of the Temple of Antas [1]. The question of the location of the temple was resolved following an important survey carried out in 1966 in the Antas valley, where the ruins of the muragic village and others archaeological findings, including some Roman tombs and ancient stone quarries, were discovered [1,42].