Veneti (Slavs)
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The Vistula Veneti (also called Baltic Veneti) were an Indo-European people that inhabited the region of central Europe east of the Vistula River and the areas around the Bay of Gdańsk. The name first appeared in the 1st century AD in the writings of ancient Romans who differentiated a group of peoples whose manner and language differed from that of the Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine sources described the Veneti as the ancestors of the
Slavs Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
,Alexander M. Schenker, ''The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology'' (1995), 1.4., including a reference to J. Ochmański, Ochmański, ''Historia Litwy'', 2nd ed. (Wrocław, 1982) who during the second phase of the
Migration Period The Migration Period was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman ...
moved south across the northern frontier of the Byzantine Empire.


Roman historical sources

Pliny the Elder places the Veneti along the Baltic coast. He calls them the Sarmatian Venedi (Latin: ''Sarmatae Venedi''). Thereafter, the 2nd century Greco-Roman geographer Ptolemy in his section on Sarmatia, 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. The most exhaustive Roman treatment of the Veneti comes in ''
Germania Germania ( ; ), also called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a large historical region in north- ...
'' by Tacitus, 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, the
Peucini The Bastarnae (Latin variants: ''Bastarni'', or ''Basternae''; grc, Βαστάρναι or Βαστέρναι) and Peucini ( grc, Πευκῖνοι) were two ancient peoples who between 200 BC and 300 AD inhabited areas north of the Roman fronti ...
):
Here
Suebia Swabia ; german: Schwaben , colloquially ''Schwabenland'' or ''Ländle''; archaic English also Suabia or Svebia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany. The name is ultimately derived from the medieval Duchy of ...
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 Veneti have borrowed largely from Sarmatian ways; their plundering forays take them all over the wooded and mountainous country that rises between the
Peucini The Bastarnae (Latin variants: ''Bastarni'', or ''Basternae''; grc, Βαστάρναι or Βαστέρναι) and Peucini ( grc, Πευκῖνοι) were two ancient peoples who between 200 BC and 300 AD inhabited areas north of the Roman fronti ...
and the
Fenni The 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. Their location is uncerta ...
. 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.


Byzantine historical sources

Among the Byzantine authors, the
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
author Jordanes in his work '' Getica'' (written in 550 or 551 AD) 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 the Sclaveni (a people who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the early 6th century and who were the early South Slavs) and of the Antes ( 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 the
Dniestr The Dniester, ; rus, Дне́стр, links=1, Dnéstr, ˈdⁿʲestr; ro, Nistru; grc, Τύρᾱς, Tyrās, ; la, Tyrās, la, Danaster, label=none, ) ( ,) is a transboundary river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and th ...
to Lake Musianus, the location of which is unclear, but which has been variously identified with
Lake Constance Lake Constance (german: Bodensee, ) refers to three Body of water, bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, ca ...
, the
Tisa The Tisza, Tysa or Tisa, is one of the major rivers of Central and Eastern Europe. Once, it was called "the most Hungarian river" because it flowed entirely within the Kingdom of Hungary. Today, it crosses several national borders. The Tisza be ...
Danube marshes or the Danube delta. He also places the Antes to the east of the Sclaveni. Later, in Getica, he returns to the Veneti by stating that though "off-shoots of one stock hese peoplehave now three names, that is Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni" and noting that they, at one time, had been conquered by the Goths under
Ermanaric Ermanaric; la, Ermanaricus or ''Hermanaricus''; ang, Eormanrīc ; on, Jǫrmunrekkr , gmh, Ermenrîch (died 376) was a Greuthungian Gothic king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia ...
. 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 named Vinitharius, i.e., conqueror of the Veneti. Though Jordanes is the only author to explicitly associate the Veneti with what appear to have been Sclaveni and Antes, the Tabula Peutingeriana, originating from the 3rd to 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.


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, and the Przeworsk and Zarubintsy cultures east of the Vistula river. The Baltic cultures are associated with the Proto-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. The Przeworsk and Zarubintsy cultures are associated with Proto-Slavs, though the Przeworsk culture was a mix of several tribal societies and is also often linked to the Germanic tribe of Vandals.


Ethnolinguistic character

During the Middle Ages the region east of the mouth of the Vistula river was inhabited by people speaking Old Prussian, a now-extinct Baltic language in an area described by Tacitus in AD 98 as "Suebian Sea, which washes the country of the
Aestii The Aesti (also Aestii, Astui or Aests) were an ancient people first described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his treatise '' Germania'' (circa 98 AD). According to Tacitus, the land of ''Aesti'' was located somewhere east of the ''Suiones'' ( ...
, who have the same customs and fashions as the
Suebi The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names ...
". It is unknown what language the yet further east Veneti spoke, although the implication of Tacitus' description of them is that it was not a form of Germanic.


Proto-Slavic and Baltic languages

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 earliest origins of Slavs seem to lie in the area between the Middle Dnieper and the Bug rivers, where the most archaic Slavic hydronyms 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 A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
from centum-type 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 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.


Historic references to the Early Slavs

Modern historians most often link the Veneti to Early Slavs, based on Jordanes' writings from the 6th century: It is also clear that the Franks in later centuries (see, e.g., Life of Saint Martinus, Fredegar's Chronicle,
Gregory of Tours Gregory of Tours (30 November 538 – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of the area that had been previously referred to as Gaul by the Romans. He was born Georgius Florenti ...
), Lombards (see, e.g.,
Paul the Deacon Paul the Deacon ( 720s 13 April in 796, 797, 798, or 799 AD), also known as ''Paulus Diaconus'', ''Warnefridus'', ''Barnefridus'', or ''Winfridus'', and sometimes suffixed ''Cassinensis'' (''i.e.'' "of Monte Cassino"), was a Benedictine monk, s ...
), and Anglo-Saxons (see Widsith's Song) referred to Slavs both in the Elbe-Saal region and in Pomerania generally, as ''Wenden'' or ''Winden'' (see '' Wends''), which was a later corruption of the word Veneti. Likewise, the Franks and Bavarians of Styria and Carinthia referred to their Slavic neighbours as ''Windische''. It has not been shown that either the original Veneti or the Slavs themselves used the ethnonym ''Veneti'' 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.Gottfried Schramm Venedi, Antes, Sclaveni, Sclavi in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, Bd. 43, Heft 2, 1995>


Controversies

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 to
Pavel Josef Šafařík Pavel (Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and Macedonian: Павел, Czech, Slovene, Romanian: Pavel, Polish: Paweł, Ukrainian: Павло, Pavlo) is a male given name. It is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul (derived from the Greek Pavlos). Pavel ...
from Prague, who tried to establish a ''Slavic Origin''. Scholars and historians since then viewed the reports on ''Venedi/Venethi'' by Tacitus, Pliny and Ptolemy as the earliest historical attestation of
Slavs Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
. "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." Considering Ptolemy's ''Ouenedai'' 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 that Proto-Slavic had no maritime terminology and further claims it even lacked a word for amber. Based on this belief, and the fact that Ptolemy refers to the Baltic Sea as the "Venedic" Bay, Schenker decides against a possible identification of the ''Veneti'' of Ptolemy's times, with today's Slavs. According to Gołąb, Schenker's conclusion is supported by the fact that to the east of the ''Venedae'', Ptolemy mentions two further tribes called ''Stavanoi'' (Σταυανοί) and ''Souobenoi'' (Σουοβενοι), both of which have been interpreted as possibly the oldest historical attestations of at least some Slavs. 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. 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. It has been argued that the ''Veneti'' were a centum
Indo-European people The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
, 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 the Italo-Celtic branch, but different from the Germanic branch, and show similarities with those attested in the area of the Adriatic Veneti (in Northeastern Italy) as well as those attested in the Western Balkans that are attributed to Illyrians, which points to a possible connection between these ancient Indo-European peoples. In the 1980s and 1990s some Slovene authors proposed a theory according to which the ''Veneti'' were Proto-Slavs and bearers of the Lusatian culture along the
Amber Path The Amber Road was an ancient trade route for the transfer of amber from coastal areas of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Prehistoric trade routes between Northern and Southern Europe were defined by the amber trade. ...
who settled the region between the Baltic Sea and Adriatic Sea and included the Adriatic 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.Z. Skrbiš, 41–56 and M. Svašek, 144.


See also

* Veneti (disambiguation) *
Vends The Vends ( lat, wendi, lv, vendi, et, võndlased, võnnulased, vendid) were a Balto-Finnic people that lived between the 12th to 16th centuries in the area around the town of Wenden (now Cēsis) in present-day north-central Latvia. Accordi ...
* Wends


Notes


References

* Agnes, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1999). "Webster's New World College Dictionary". Cleveland: MacMillan USA, 1999. . * Andersen, Henning (2003), "Slavic and the Indo-European Migrations", Language contacts in prehistory: studies in stratigraphy, John Benjamins Publishing Company, . * * Dzino, Daniel (2010). ''Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post-Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia''. Brill, 2010. * Gołąb, Zbigniew (1992). ''The Origins of the Slavs: A Linguist's view''. Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1992. . * Krahe, Hans (1957). ''Vorgeschichtliche Sprachbeziehungen von den baltischen Ostseeländern bis zu den Gebieten um den Nordteil der Adria''. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1957. * Krahe, Hans (1954). ''Sprache und Vorzeit: Europäische Vorgeschichte nach dem Zeugnis der Sprache''. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1954. * Okulicz, Jerzy (1986). ''Einige Aspekte der Ethnogenese der Balten und Slawen im Lichte archäologischer und sprachwissenschaftlicher Forschungen''. Quaestiones medii aevi, Vol. 3, p. 7-34. * Pokorny, Julius (1959). ''Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch''. Bern, München : Francke, 1959. * Parczewski, Michał (1993). ''Die Anfänge der frühslawischen Kultur in Polen''. Wien: Österreichische Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, 1993. Veröffentlichungen der österreichischen Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte; Bd. 17. * Pleterski, Andrej (1995). ''Model etnogeneze Slovanov na osnovi nekaterih novejših raziskav'' / ''A model of an Ethnogenesis of Slavs based on Some Recent Research''. Zgodovinski časopis = Historical Review 49, No. 4, 1995, p. 537-556. . English summary: * Schenker, Alexander M. (1996). ''The Dawn of Slavic: an Introduction to Slavic Philology''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. . * Skrbiš, Zlatko (2002). ''The Emotional Historiography of Venetologists: Slovene Diaspora, Memory and Nationalism''. Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology 39, 2002, p. 41-56

* Steinacher, Roland (2002)
Studien zur vandalischen Geschichte. Die Gleichsetzung der Ethnonyme Wenden, Slawen und Vandalen vom Mittelalter bis ins 18. Jahrhundert
doctoral thesis). Wien, 2002. * Steinacher, Roland (2004). ''Wenden, Slawen, Vandalen. Eine frühmittelalterliche pseudologische Gleichsetzung und ihr Nachleben bis ins 18. Jahrhundert''. In: W. Pohl (Hrsg.): ''Auf der Suche nach den Ursprüngen. Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters'' (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 8), Wien 2004, p. 329-353. * Svašek, Maruška. ''Postsocialism politics and emotions in Central and Eastern Europe'', Berghahn Books, 2006, {{pomeranian history, dem Ancient Roman geography Early Slavs Historical ethnic groups of Europe Veneti