TheVistula Veneti, also calledBaltic Veneti,Venedi orVenethi, were anIndo-European people that inhabited the lands ofcentral Europe east of theVistula River and theBay of Gdańsk. Ancient Roman geographers first mentionedVenedi in the 1st century AD, differentiating a group of peoples whose manner and language differed from those of the neighbouring Germanic andSarmatian tribes. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine historians described the Veneti as the ancestors of theSlavs who, during the second phase of theMigration Period, crossed the northern frontiers of theByzantine Empire.[1][2][3]
Pliny the Elder places the Veneti along the Baltic coast. He calls them the Sarmatian Venedi (Latin:Sarmatae Venedi).[4] Thereafter, the 2nd century Greco-Roman geographerPtolemy in his section onSarmatia, places the GreaterOuenedai along the entireVenedic Bay, which is equivalent to the southern shores of the Baltic. He names tribes south of the Greater Venedae along the eastern bank of the Vistula and further east.[5]
The most exhaustive Roman treatment of the Veneti comes inGermania byTacitus, who writing in AD 98, places the Veneti among the peoples on the eastern fringe of Germania. He was uncertain of their ethnic identity, classifying them as Germanic based on their way of life, but not based on their language (in comparison to, for example, thePeucini):
Here Suebia ends. I do not know whether to class the tribes of the Peucini, Venedi, and Fenni with the Germans or with the Sarmatians. The Peucini, however, who are sometimes called Bastarnae, are like Germans in their language, manner of life, and mode of settlement and habitation. Squalor is universal among them and their nobles are indolent. Mixed marriages are giving them something of the repulsive appearance of the Sarmatians. The Venedi have adopted many Sarmatian habits; for their plundering forays take them over all the wooded and mountainous highlands that lie between the Peucini and the Fenni. Nevertheless, they are on the whole to be classed as Germans; for they have settled homes, carry shields, and are fond of travelling—and travelling fast on foot—differing in all these respects from the Sarmatians, who live in wagons or on horseback. The Fenni are astonishingly savage and disgustingly poor.[6]
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Among the Byzantine authors, theGothic authorJordanes in his workGetica (written in 550 or 551 AD)[7] describes the Veneti as a "populous nation" whose dwellings begin at the sources of the Vistula and occupy "a great expanse of land". He describes them as the ancestors of theSclaveni (a people who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the early 6th century and who were the earlySouth Slavs) and of theAntes (East Slavs). Specifically, he states that the Sclaveni and the Antes used to be called the Veneti, but are now "chiefly" (though, by implication, not exclusively) called Sclaveni and Antes. He places the Sclaveni north of a line from theDniestr to Lake Musianus, the location of which is unclear, but which has been variously identified withLake Constance, theTisa–Danube marshes or the Danube delta. He also places the Antes to the east of the Sclaveni.[8]
Later inGetica, he returns to the Veneti by stating that though "off-shoots of one stock [these people] have now three names, that is Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni" and noting that they, at one time, had been conquered by the Goths underErmanaric.[9] Consistent with the view that the Veneti were an umbrella term for these three peoples, he later also recalls the defeat of the Antes at the hands of a Gothic chieftain namedVinitharius, i.e., conqueror of the Veneti.[10]
Though Jordanes is the only author to explicitly associate the Veneti with the Sclaveni and Antes, theTabula Peutingeriana, originating from the 3rd to the 4th century AD, separately mentions theVenedi on the northern bank of the Danube somewhat upstream of its mouth and theVenadi Sarmatae along the Baltic coast.[11]
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, and thePrzeworsk andZarubintsy cultures east of the Vistula river. The Baltic cultures are associated with theProto-Balts. 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.[12] ThePrzeworsk andZarubintsy cultures are associated withProto-Slavs, though the Przeworsk culture was a mix of several tribal societies and is also often linked to the Germanic tribe of Vandals.
During the Middle Ages the region east of the mouth of the Vistula river was inhabited by people speakingOld Prussian, a now-extinct Baltic language in an area described by Tacitus in AD 98 as "Suebian Sea, which washes the country of theAestii, who have the same customs and fashions as theSuebi". It is unknown what language the yet further east Veneti spoke, although the implication of Tacitus' description of them is that it wasnot a form of Germanic.
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 language continuum. The earliestorigins of Slavs seem to lie in the area between the MiddleDnieper and theBug rivers, where the most archaic Slavichydronyms have been established.[13] The vocabulary of Proto-Slavic had a heterogenous character and there is evidence that in the early stages of its evolution it adopted someloanwords fromcentum-type Indo-European languages. It has been proposed that contacts of Proto-Slavs with theVeneti may have been one of the sources for these borrowings.[14][15] The aforementioned area of proto-Slavic hydronyms roughly corresponds with theZarubintsy archeological culture 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.[16]
Modern historians most often link the Veneti toEarly Slavs, based on Jordanes' writings from the 6th century:
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 ofVenedi 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 asSclaveni, they were apparently already separated into three main divisions...
— AnEncyclopedia of World History,William L. Langer, Harvard University, 1940 & 1948[17]
It is also clear that the Franks in later centuries (see, e.g., Life of Saint Martinus, Fredegar's Chronicle,Gregory of Tours), Lombards (see, e.g.,Paul the Deacon), and Anglo-Saxons (see Widsith's Song) referred to Slavs both in the Elbe-Saal region and in Pomerania generally, asWenden orWinden (seeWends), which was a later corruption of the word Veneti. Likewise, the Franks and Bavarians of Styria and Carinthia referred to their Slavic neighbours asWindische. A term still used sparsly today as en exonym for the Slovenes and sometimes also as an endonym by theCarinthian Slovenes.
It has not been shown that either the original Veneti or the Slavs themselves used the ethnonymVeneti to describe their ethnos. Of course, other peoples, e.g. the Germans (called so first by the Romans), did not have a name for themselves other than localized tribal names.[18]
Roland Steinacher states that "The name Veneder was introduced by Jordanes. The assumption that these were Slavs can be traced back to the 19th century toPavel Josef Šafařík fromPrague, who tried to establish aSlavic Origin. Scholars and historians since then viewed the reports onVenedi/Venethi by Tacitus, Pliny and Ptolemy as the earliest historical attestation ofSlavs.[19] "Such conceptions, started in the 16th century, resurfaced in the 19th century where they provided the basis for interpretations of the history and origins of Slavs."[20]
Considering Ptolemy'sOuenedai and their location along the Baltic sea, the German linguist, Alexander M. Schenker, asserts that the vocabulary of the Slavic languages shows no evidence that the early Slavs were exposed to the sea. Schenker claims thatProto-Slavic had no maritime terminology and further claims it even lacked a word for amber. Based on this belief, and the fact thatPtolemy refers to the Baltic Sea as the "Venedic" Bay, Schenker decides against a possible identification of theVeneti of Ptolemy's times, with today's Slavs.[21] According to Gołąb, Schenker's conclusion is supported by the fact that to the east of theVenedae, Ptolemy mentions two further tribes calledStavanoi (Σταυανοί) andSouobenoi (Σουοβενοι), both of which have been interpreted as possibly the oldest historical attestations of at least some Slavs.[22]
Others scholars have interpreted these as Prussian tribes (Sudini) as they follow other known Prussian tribes in Ptolemy's listing (e.g., the Galindae (Γαλίνδαι)). Moreover, that conclusion (Gołąb, Schenker), if correct, may only account for the Byzantine Slavs of Jordanes and Procopius since Jordanes clearly (see above) understands Veneti as a group at least as broad as today's Slavs but does not understand the converse to be the case (i.e., his "Slavs" are localized around Byzantium and north through Moravia only) since his Slavs remain a subset of the broader category of Veneti.[23] It also is clear that the Byzantine term "Slav" had gradually replaced the Germanic "Winden"/"Wenden" as applied to all the people we would, today, consider Slavs.[24][18]
It has been argued that theVeneti were acentumIndo-European people, rather than satem Baltic-speakers.Zbigniew Gołąb considers that the hydronyms of the Vistula and Odra river basins had a North-West Indo-European character with close affinities to theItalo-Celtic branch, but different from theGermanic branch, and show similarities with those attested in the area of theAdriatic Veneti (in Northeastern Italy) as well as those attested in the Western Balkans that are attributed toIllyrians, which points to a possible connection between these ancient Indo-European peoples.[25]
In the 1980s and 1990s someSlovene authors proposed atheory according to which theVeneti were Proto-Slavs and bearers of the Lusatian culture along theAmber Path who settled the region between theBaltic Sea andAdriatic Sea and included theAdriatic Veneti, as presented in their book "Veneti – First Builders of European Community". This theory would place the Veneti as a pre-Celtic, pre-Latin and pre-Germanic population of Europe. The theory is rejected by mainstream historians and linguists.[26]
Jordanes left no doubt that the Antes were of Slavic origin when he wrote: 'ab unastirpe exorti, tria nomina ediderunt, id est Veneti, Antes, Sclaveni' (although they derive from one nation, now they are known under three names, the Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni.)
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 ofVenedi as inhabiting the region beyond the Vistula.