ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is the circumstances which led to the foundation
of the Roman town of Lugdunum, both in general terms of the topography
and resources of the region and in specific terms of the historical circum-
stances of its creation. Therefore, the chapter opens with a broad-brush
survey of the natural setting of this area of the central Pyrenees and, in
particular, the mineral and other resources available in the mountains and
the agricultural potential of the lowlands to the north. It then examines the
evidence for the creation of the Roman civitas of the Convenae in the first century B.C., largely, and perforce, from the surviving Roman documenta-
tion, before turning to the archaeology and other evidence from the area to
see what can be said about the situation before the incorporation of this
area into the Roman empire and about the effects that incorporation had
on the first generations who experienced it.
