Venedes
Encyclopedia
Vistula
The Vistula is the longest and the most important river in Poland, at 1,047 km in length. The watershed area of the Vistula is , of which lies within Poland ....
and the Bay of Gdańsk.
Etymology of the ethnonym Veneti
According to Julius PokornýJulius Pokorny
Julius Pokorny was an Austrian linguist and scholar of the Celtic languages, particularly Irish, and a supporter of Irish nationalism. He held academic posts in Austrian and German universities.-Life:...
, the ethnonym Venetī (singular *Venetos) is derived from Proto Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
root } 'to strive; to wish for, to love'. As shown by the comparative material, Germanic languages had two terms of different origin: Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
Winida 'Wende' points to Pre-Germanic
Germanic Parent Language
Germanic Parent Language is a term used in historical linguistics to describe the chain of reconstructed languages in the Germanic group referred to as Pre-Germanic Indo-European , Early Proto-Germanic , and Late Proto-Germanic . It is intended to cover the time of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC...
*Venétos, while Lat.-Germ. Venedi (as attested in Tacitus) and Old English Winedas 'Wends' call for Pre-Germanic *Venetós. Etymologically related words include Latin venus, -eris 'love, passion, grace'; Sanskrit vanas- 'lust, zest', vani- 'wish, desire'; Old Irish fine (< Proto-Celtic *venjā) 'kinship, kinfolk, alliance, tribe, family'; Old Norse vinr, Old Saxon, Old High German wini, Old Frisian, Old English wine 'Friend'.
Historical sources
From the 2nd century AD, Roman authors saw the lands between the Rhine and the VistulaVistula
The Vistula is the longest and the most important river in Poland, at 1,047 km in length. The watershed area of the Vistula is , of which lies within Poland ....
rivers as Germania
Germania
Germania was the Greek and Roman geographical term for the geographical regions inhabited by mainly by peoples considered to be Germani. It was most often used to refer especially to the east of the Rhine and north of the Danube...
. East of the Vistula was classed as Sarmatia. The 2nd-century geographer Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
makes that boundary clear. In his section on Sarmatia he places the Greater Ouenedai along the entire Venedic Bay, which can be located from the context on the southern shores of the Baltic. He names tribes south of these Greater Venedae both along the eastern bank of the Vistula and further east. So it seems that his "Venedicus bay" was the Bay of Danzig, still inhabited by speakers of Baltic languages
Baltic languages
The Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
in the Middle Ages. The area was part of Prussia. Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
also places the Veneti along the Baltic coast. He calls them the Sarmatian Venedi (Latin Sarmatae Venedi).
This region was barely known to the Romans a century earlier than Ptolemy. Tacitus, writing in AD 98 did not refer to the Vistula as a boundary, but simply locates the Veneti among the peoples on the eastern fringe of Germania. He was uncertain of their ethnic identity:
The Veneti have borrowed largely from Sarmatian ways; their plundering forays take them all over the wooded and mountainous country that rises between the Peucini and the FenniFenniThe Fenni were an ancient people of northeastern Europe first described by Cornelius Tacitus in Germania in AD 98.- Ancient accounts :The Fenni are first mentioned by Cornelius Tacitus in Germania in 98 A.D...
. Nevertheless, they are to be classed as Germani, for they have settled houses, carry shields and are fond of travelling fast on foot; in all these respects they differ from the Sarmatians, who live in wagons or on horseback.
The Gothic
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
author Jordanes
Jordanes
Jordanes, also written Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat, who turned his hand to history later in life....
, who wrote in Constantinople, ended his work Getica in 550 or 551 AD. He delivered an account of the origin of Sclavenes and he mentioned three group names: the Venethi, Sclavenes and Antes. In one chapter Jordanes presented the Sclavenes and Antes as the most numerous of the Venethi, however in another chapter he saw them as three different groups. Though Jordanes is the only author to make these claims, the Tabula Peutingeriana
Tabula Peutingeriana
The Tabula Peutingeriana is an itinerarium showing the cursus publicus, the road network in the Roman Empire. The original map of which this is a unique copy was last revised in the fourth or early fifth century. It covers Europe, parts of Asia and North Africa...
, originating from the 4th century AD, separately mentions the Venedi on the northern bank of the Danube somewhat upstream of its mouth, and the Venadi Sarmatae along the Baltic coast.
Henry of Livonia in his Latin chronicle of c. 1200 described a clearly non-Slavic tribe of the Vindi (German Winden, English Wends) which lived in Courland and Livonia
Livonia
Livonia is a historic region along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It was once the land of the Finnic Livonians inhabiting the principal ancient Livonian County Metsepole with its center at Turaida...
in what is now Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
. The tribe’s name is preserved in the river Windau (Latvian Venta), with the town of Windau (Latvian Ventspils
Ventspils
Ventspils is a city in northwestern Latvia in the Courland historical region of Latvia, the sixth largest city in the country. As of 2006, Ventspils had a population of 43,806. Ventspils is situated on the Venta River and the Baltic Sea, and has an ice-free port...
) at its mouth, and in Wenden, the old name of the town of Cēsis in Livonia. (See Vends
Vends
The Vends were a small tribe who lived in the twelfth-sixteenth centuries in the area around the town of Wenden in what is now north-central Latvia...
).
Ethnolinguistic character
During the Middle Ages the region was inhabited by people speaking Old Prussian, a now-extinct Baltic language.It has been argued that the Veneti were a centum Indo-European people
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, rather than Baltic-speakers. Zbigniew Gołąb
Zbigniew Gołąb
Zbigniew Gołąb was a Polish American linguist and Slavist. He was described as "one of the world's greatest experts on the Macedonian language and the leading expert on Macedonian-Arumanian contact"...
considers that the hydronyms of the Vistula and Odra river basins had a North-West Indo-European character with close affinities to the Italo-Celtic
Italo-Celtic
In historical linguistics, Italo-Celtic is a grouping of the Italic and Celtic branches of the Indo-European language family on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. These are usually considered to be innovations, which are likely to have developed after the breakup of...
branch, but different from the Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
branch, and show resemblances to those attested in the area of the Adriatic Veneti
Adriatic Veneti
The Veneti were an ancient people who inhabited north-eastern Italy, in an area corresponding to the modern-day region of the Veneto....
(in Northeastern Italy) as well as those attested in the Western Balkans that are attributed to Illyrians
Illyrians
The Illyrians were a group of tribes who inhabited part of the western Balkans in antiquity and the south-eastern coasts of the Italian peninsula...
, which suggests points to a possible connection between these ancient Indo-European peoples. However, according to Steinacher, the Adriatic Veneti
Adriatic Veneti
The Veneti were an ancient people who inhabited north-eastern Italy, in an area corresponding to the modern-day region of the Veneto....
, the Veneti of Gaul
Veneti (Gaul)
The Veneti were a seafaring Celtic people who lived in the Brittany peninsula , which in Roman times formed part of an area called Armorica...
and the North Balkan/Paphlagonia
Paphlagonia
Paphlagonia was an ancient area on the Black Sea coast of north central Anatolia, situated between Bithynia to the west and Pontus to the east, and separated from Phrygia by a prolongation to the east of the Bithynian Olympus...
n Enetoi mentioned by Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
and Appian
Appian
Appian of Alexandria was a Roman historian of Greek ethnicity who flourished during the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius.He was born ca. 95 in Alexandria. He tells us that, after having filled the chief offices in the province of Egypt, he went to Rome ca. 120, where he practised as...
were not related to each other, nor to the Veneti/Venedi mentioned by Tacitus, Pliny and Ptolemy.
Archaeology
In the region identified by Ptolemy and Pliny, east of the Vistula and adjoining the Baltic, there was an Iron Age culture, known to archaeologists as the West Baltic Cairns Culture or West Baltic Barrow Culture, shown coloured violet on the map given here. The culture is associated with the Proto-BaltsBalts
The Balts or Baltic peoples , defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the Jutland peninsula in the west and Moscow, Oka and Volga rivers basins in the east...
, who kept this area for almost two thousand years, avoiding adoption of new ideas from their neighbours. These herders lived in small settlements or in little lake dwellings built on artificial islands made of several layers of wooden logs attached by stakes. Their metals were imported, and their dead were cremated and put in urns covered by small mounds.
In the Post-War era Polish archaeologists generally interpreted the Veneti as the possible bearers of the Pomeranian culture
Pomeranian culture
The Pomeranian culture, also Pomeranian or Pomerelian Face Urn culture was an Iron Age culture in Pomerania, northern Poland. About 650 BC, it evolved from the Lusatian culture, often associated with the Nordic Bronze Age, and subsequently expanded southward...
, an Iron Age archaeological culture in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
to the west of the Vistula, despite the clear location of the Veneti in Roman sources to the east of the Vistula. This identification can still be found in the work of Polish authors of the 1980s and 1990s, although more recent Polish authors tend to reject it.
Relation between Veneti, Balts and Slavs
The Veneti were geographically and temporally contiguous to the Germanic and Slavic peoples and were eventually assimilated by both groups, perhaps even more decisively by Slavs, who later settled in the territory which erstwhile belonged to the Veneti. The Germanic peoplesGermanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
subsequently transferred the ethnonym Veneti to their new easterly neighbours, the Slavs. This tradition survived in German language where Slavs living in closest proximity to Germany were originally called Wenden or Winden (see Wends
Wends
Wends is a historic name for West Slavs living near Germanic settlement areas. It does not refer to a homogeneous people, but to various peoples, tribes or groups depending on where and when it is used...
), while the people of the Austrian federal lands Styria and Carinthia referred to their Slavic neighbours as Windische. It should be emphasised, though, that Slavic peoples never used the ethnonym Veneti for themselves but were called thus only by the neighbouring Germanic peoples. Such transfers of ethnonyms from one group to another are not unusual and have occurred frequently in history. Although Tacitus listed the Venethi as a Germanic tribe, in his Getica, Jordanes
Jordanes
Jordanes, also written Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat, who turned his hand to history later in life....
equated the Venethi with the Sclavenes and Antes. Slavists such as Pavel Josef Šafařík have criticized Tacitus for erroneously identifying the Venethi as Germanic, due to the similar appearance of Slavs and Germans
Considering Ptolemy's Ouenedai and their location along the Baltic sea, a German linguist, Alexander M. Schenker, underlines that the vocabulary of the Slavic languages shows no evidence that the early Slavs were exposed to the sea. Proto-Slavic had no maritime terminology and even lacked a word for amber which was the most important item of export from the shores of the Baltic to the Mediterranean. In view of this, the very fact that Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
refers to the Baltic as the Venedic Bay appears to rule out a possible identification of the Veneti of his times with the Slavs. Schenker's conclusion is supported by the fact that to the east of the Ouenedai, Ptolemy mentions two further tribes called Stauanoi and Souobenoi, both of which have been interpreted as possibly the oldest historical attestations of Slavs.
Linguists agree that Slavic languages evolved in close proximity with the Baltic languages. The two language families probably evolved from a common ancestor, a phylogenetic Proto-Balto-Slavic
Balto-Slavic languages
The Balto-Slavic language group traditionally comprises Baltic and Slavic languages, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to the period of common development...
language continuum. The earliest origins of Slavs seem to lie in the area between the Middle Dnieper and the Bug
Southern Bug
The Southern Bug, also called Southern Buh), is a river located in Ukraine. The source of the river is in the west of Ukraine, in the Volyn-Podillia Upland, about 145 km from the Polish border, and flows southeasterly into the Bug Estuary through the southern steppes...
rivers, where the most archaic Slavic hydronym
Hydronym
A hydronym is a proper name of a body of water. Hydronymy is the study of hydronyms and of how bodies of water receive their names and how they are transmitted through history...
s have been established. The vocabulary of Proto-Slavic had a heterogenous character and there is evidence that in the early stages of its evolution it adopted some loanwords
Proto-Slavic borrowings
Numerous lexemes that are reconstructible for the Proto-Slavic language have been identified as borrowings from the languages of various tribes that Proto-Slavic speakers came into contact with, either in prehistorical times or during their expansion when they first appeared in history in the 6th...
from centum-type
Centum-Satem isogloss
The centum-satem division is an isogloss of the Indo-European language family, related to the different evolution of the three dorsal consonant rows of the mainstream reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European:...
Indo-European languages. It has been proposed that contacts of Proto-Slavs with the Veneti may have been one of the sources for these borrowings. The aforementioned area of proto-Slavic hydronyms roughly corresponds with the Zarubintsy archeological culture
Zarubintsy culture
The Zarubintsy culture was a culture that from the 3rd century BC until 1st century AD flourished in the area north of the Black Sea along the upper and middle Dnieper and Pripyat Rivers, stretching west towards the Southern Bug river. Zarubintsy sites were particularly dense between the Rivers...
which has been interpreted as the most likely locus of the ethnogenesis of Slavs. According to Polish archaeologist Michał Parczewski, Slavs began to settle in southeastern Poland no earlier than the late 5th century AD, the Prague culture being their recognizable expression.
Controversies
Steinacher states: "The name Veneder was introduced by Jordanes. The assumption that these were Slavs can be traced back to the 16th century to P. J. Schaforschik from PraguePrague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, who tried to establish a Slavic Origin history. Scholars and historians since then viewed the reports on Venedi/Venethi by Tacitus, Pliny and Ptolemy as the earliest historical attestation of Slavs. In addition, phonetic similarity and geographic proximity of the ethnicons Veneti and Vandali inspired an erroneous belief that the Germanic people of Vandals
Vandals
The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe that entered the late Roman Empire during the 5th century. The Vandals under king Genseric entered Africa in 429 and by 439 established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics....
were Slavs as well". Such conceptions, started in the 16th century, resurfaced in 19th century where they provided the basis for interpretations of the history and origins of Slavs.
In 1980s some Slovene scholars proposed a theory
Venetic theory
The Venetic theory is a widely diffused autochthonist theory of the origin of Slovenes which denies the Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps in the 6th century, claiming that proto-Slovenes have inhabited the region since ancient times. Although it has been rejected by scholars, it has been an...
according to which the Veneti were Proto-Slavs and bearers of the Lusatian culture along the Amber Path who conquered and settled the region between the Baltic sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
and Adriatic Sea
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula, and the system of the Apennine Mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges...
, as presented in their book "Veneti - First Builders of European Community". This theory has been criticised and rejected by Slovenian and other European scholars.
"An Encyclopedia of World History" (William L. Langer, Harvard University, 1940 & 1948), "The Slavs, an eastern branch of the Indo-European family, were known to the Roman and Greek writers of the 1st and 2d centuries A.D. under the name of Venedi as inhabiting the region beyond the Vistula. ... In the course of the early centuries of our era the Slavs expanded in all directions, and by the 6th century, when they were known to Gothic and Byzantine writers as Sclaveni, they were apparently already separated into three main divisions: ..."