The Veneti are two homonymous ancient peoples.
One is one of the Gallic peoples. He resided in present-day Morbihan and gave his name to the city of Vannes. The other lived in Veneto and gave his name to Venice. He spoke an Italic language, Veneto. They are frequently considered to be of the same origin as the Venetians of Gaul. This theory is based on the linguistic similarities present, among other things, in onomastics, but these common traits can also be explained by the close kinship ties that exist between the Italic languages and the Celtic languages. The linguistic data therefore do not allow us to decide in favor of either of these two hypotheses. Note that the name of the Vénètes is also identical to that given by the Germans to a people of central Europe who will eventually be Slavicized, the Wendes.
Assumptions
André Martinet makes the following hypothesis:the Vénètes, an Indo-European speaking people, were located towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC. AD and the beginning of the second millennium BC. AD around present-day Poland[1]. At that time, the dialects[2] which were to give birth to the Celtic, Italic, Germanic and Slavic languages were still to be largely intercomprehensible. Some of them had to follow the Celts westward, to finally be completely Celticized, while others were dragged southward in the wake of the Italics, whose linguistic influence they also suffered. Finally, some stayed on the spot, where they were probably gradually Germanized[3], before coming under pressure from the Slavs, with whom they ended up merging (in the 5th century). The Germans then continue to refer to their neighbors to the south-east, who are now Slavs, by the name of "Wends".
The Veneti of Italy
The Veneti (Latin:Veneti, Ancient Greek:Ενετοί Enetoi) of Italy lived in Veneto and were noted horse breeders. They would have pushed the Euganeans back into the mountains. They constantly fought their neighbors the Celts, Carnes, Istrians and Liburnians. They are reported as allies of the Romans in the 3rd century BC. They then provided auxiliaries to the Roman army during the Second Punic War. They then probably had to take refuge in the islands of the lagoon of Venice before the arrival of invaders. To fight the Gauls, they allied themselves with Rome and then easily accepted its hegemony. They are still reported in the Adriatic islands under Marcus Aurelius (2nd century). We know their language, Venetian, thanks to a few hundred inscriptions. Their capital would have been Padua, the most beautiful of their fifty cities.
The Venetians of Gaul[edit]
Aremorica was inhabited to the south by the Veneti (Celtic Veneti):
“By their considerable navy, their well-recognized nautical superiority and their commercial relations with the island of Brittany, the Venetians had become a very powerful people, whose authority extended far and wide over the entire coast of Gaul and Island Brittany. They possessed a small number of ports situated on this open and stormy sea at great distances from each other and rendered tributary almost all the navigators obliged to pass through their waters. »
- Gallic Wars, III, 8, Julius Caesar
The Vénètes, powerful and influential maritime and commercial power, as later will be Venice or Saint Malo, had a strong organization and was equipped with a senate and had in particular an important fleet to trade with the British islands and Italy of which it distributed wine and oil (which the Romans transported to Armorica from Bordeaux) to Armorica and island Brittany from Vannes and the present-day Malouine region, notably at Hengistbury Head (not far from Bournemouth in present-day Dorset) and to whom it sold, among other products, Armorican cured meats and charcuterie, already well known and appreciated in Rome, in addition to tin, lead and copper from the big island.
Further south of Aremorica there were the Namnètes who lived at the mouth of the Loire and gave their name to the city of Nantes. The Namnetes are called “Samnites” by Strabo and by Ptolemy[4]. The Namnetes were for a long time a simple tribe of the Veneti.
The Pictons were hostile to the Veneti as can be deduced from their connection with the proconsul Julius Caesar from his first campaign[5] and from the ships built or supplied to the Romans by them, by the Santons and other Gallic peoples to facilitate their ruin of the Veneti[6].
In 56 BC. J.-C., the ships of Julius Caesar provided by other Gallic peoples destroy the Venetian fleet during the Battle of Morbihan. The parliament was shot and the women and children sold as slaves.