According to Wauquelin, seven roads, dedicated to the planets Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Saturn, Mercury, the Sun, and the Moon, left from seven temples in the city.
This episode has been considered a fable by most historians since the 19th century and even more so the bloody infighting which opposed the reign of Belges Queen Ursa by the former King Ursus.
The columnist and historian of Hainaut, Jacques de Guise was simply called Belgis (Belge), a name derived by him from Belis (the god Bel).
Various authors and more modern "antiquarians" (people studying antiquity), including Joseph Adolphe Aubenas, while recognizing a lack of evidence in archeology, recalled that other texts, the oldest dating back to at least the 1st century AD also said that the Trojans came to Gaul and founded a great city.
Thus, Aubenas, a member of the Society of Antiquaries of France, who in 1804 set up a goal to study the civilization of Gaul, history and French archeology, estimated in 1839 that Jacques de Guise did not invent anything, but only reported what the ancient writers had written before him.
[4] Aubenas cites in support of the thesis reported by J de Guise: Ammianus Marcellinus and better Timagenes according to which: "a part of the population of Gaul (according to the Druids) came from islands far away from beyond the Rhineland, where they had been driven either by frequent wars or by sea inundations".
Living in this district were some of the fiercest people of Northern Gaul and they occupied a vast area between the Scheldt, the Sambre, and the Meuse: the Nervii.
Its position was evidently strategic, but soon these military routes (the future emperor Tiberius transited at Bavay with his armies around 4 AD) were used for commercial purposes.
Large monuments were built: a forum, thermal baths fed by an aqueduct bringing water from a fountain near Floursies located twenty kilometres away, and other buildings with a seemingly official nature adorned the city.
[11] Percentage Distribution of Age Groups in Bavay and Nord Department in 2017 Source: INSEE[13][14] In 2010, the median fiscal revenue per household was €23,634.