De Pyrenaeis iugis : les voies des Convènes

The city of the Convenae, which succeeded the populations displaced by Pompey at the opening of Garonne valley onto the plain served as an anchorage in the Augustean reshaping of the lands in southern Aquitania. The military ventures of the Ist c. B.C. and the building of the cities and provinces, at the turn of our era, endowed it with a network of big arterial roads. The two northsouth roads which reached Lugdunum from Tolosa and Aginnum went on through the Val d’Aran towards Ilerda, following the valley of the Noguera Pallaresa. Although there is no mention of that layout in the antique Itineraries, epigraphic and archeological data make its existence obvious. The building of that network along that of the by-ways that was to complete it was a matter of time as a fair number of ground observations illustrate it.