Lugdunum Convenarum
The oppidum of the Volcae Tectosages was conquered by Pompey in 72 B.C. It became the capital of the civitas of the Convenae, which was successively part of the Provincia, of Aquitania, and of Novempopulania. The town obtained first Latin, then colonial status. It was ravaged by the Germanic invasions and was destroyed in 585 by the Franks of Gontran.
Lugdunum commands the valley of the Garonne as it emerges from the Pyrenees. The ancient oppidum was placed on the heights and under the Empire was a double town; it was protected by a rampart in the Late Empire and now bears the Cathedral of Saint-Bertrand. The lower town was built on the plain in a checkerboard pattern, from the beginning of the Empire on.
The lower town has been excavated from 1920 on. It included a number of public monuments: a vast forum built of limestone in the 1st c. A.D., of marble in the 2d; two large bathing establishments, the Baths of the Forum and the Northern Baths; a large basilica turned into a market in Flavian times; squares and porticos, some of which date as late as the 4th c.; a hexastylic temple, no doubt consecrated to Roma and Augustus; attached to this last, an Augustean trophy erected in 25 B.C to celebrate the emperor's victories on land and sea; an amphitheater; etc.
The pieces of the trophy, the inscriptions, the statues, and all the artifacts collected during the course of the excavations are kept on the site at the museum of Comminges.
BIBLIOGRAPHYR. Lizop, Les Convenae & Les Consoranni (1931) passim, esp. 72-101; id. in Mém. de la Soc. arch. du Midi de la France 17 (1930) 57-117; 18 (1932) 5-39, 129-90; 19 (1933-39) 5-75, 89-140; 20 (1940-43) 39-99, 205-46; 21 (1945-47) 53-135; A. Aymard, “Remarques sur des inscriptions de Lugdunum Convenarum,” ibid. 20 (1940-43) 131-88; G. Picard, “Trophée d'Auguste à Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges,” ibid. 21 (1947) 5-52; B. Sapène, “Au Forum de Lugdunum Convenarum : Inscriptions du début du règne de Trajan,” ibid. 19 (1939) 174-201; “Contribution à l'histoire de l'urbanisme de Lugdunum Convenarum : le carrefour du temple,” ibid. 24 (1956) 17-31; B. Sapène, “Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges” (Lugdunum Convenarum), centre touristique d'art et d'histoire, s.l. (1962). Cf. Michel Labrousse in Gallia 5 (1947) 475; 9 (1951) 134; 12 (1954) 216; 13 (1955) 204-5; 15 (1957) 261-64; 17 (1959) 427; 20 (1962) 564-66; 22 (1964) 443-44; 24 (1966) 422-23; 26 (1968) 529-30; 28 (1970) 408; A. Grenier, Manuel. . . III.1 (1958) 496-505.
M. LABROUSSE