Note 50 — Chapter III

Pliny and, presumably here too following older sources of information, Ptolemy know nothing of this division; but we still possess the uncouth verses of the Gascon farmer (Borghesi, Opp. viii. 544), who effected this change in Rome, beyond doubt in company with a number of his countrymen, although he has preferred not to add that it was so:—

The oldest trace of the administrative separation of Iberian Aquitania from the Gallic is the naming of the “district of Lactora” (Lectoure) alongside of Aquitania in an inscription from Trajan’s time (C. I. L. v. 875: procurator provinciarum Luguduniensis et Aquitanicae, item Lactorae). This inscription certainly of itself proves the diversity of the two territories rather than the formal severance of the one from the other; but it may be otherwise shown that soon after Trajan the latter was carried out. For the fact that the separated district was originally divided into nine cantons, as these verses say, is confirmed by the name that thenceforth continued in use, Novempopulana; but under Pius the district numbers already eleven communities (for the dilectator per Aquitanicae XI populos, Boissieu, Lyon, p. 246, certainly belongs to this connection), in the fifth century twelve, for the Notitia enumerates so many under the Novempopulana. This increase is to be explained similarly to that discussed at p. 95, note 2. The division does not relate to the governorship; on the contrary, both the Celtic and the Iberian Aquitania remained under the same legate. But the Novempopulana obtained under Trajan its own diet, while the Celtic districts of Aquitania, after as before, sent deputies to the diet of Lyons.