Adriatic Veneti

[1] The Veneti were initially attested in the area between Lake Garda and the Euganean Hills; later they expanded until they reached borders similar to those of the current Veneto region.

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'.

[3] The ancient Veneti spoke Venetic, an extinct Indo-European language which is evidenced in approximately 300 short inscriptions dating from the 6th to 1st centuries BC.

[4] Venetic territory was incorporated into Cisalpine Gaul, and under Augustus was organized as the tenth region (Regio X Venetia et Histria) of Roman Italy.

Regio X stretched geographically from the Arsia River in the east in what is now Croatia to the Abdua in the current Italian region of Lombardy and from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea.

[9] Hans Krahe and later Anton Mayer showed that Herodotus was not referring to the Adriatic Veneti, but to an Illyrian tribe that lived in the borderlands of northern historical Macedonia.

[11] Roman historian Titus Livius (59 BC–AD 17), himself a native of the Venetic town of Patavium, wrote that after the fall of Troy, the Trojan prince Antenor became the leader of the Paphlagonians after they all had been expelled from their homeland.

This however implies only that the ancient Liburnians may have once encompassed a wide swath of the Eastern Alps, from Vindelicia, through Noricum, to the Dalmatian coast before the coming of the Veneti.

Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) mentions that Cornelius Nepos (100–24 BC) implied that the Paphlagonian Eneti (Heneti) were ancestors of the Veneti of Italy.

[15] The Greek historian Strabo (64 BC–AD 24), on the other hand, conjectured that the Adriatic Veneti descended from Celts who in turn were related to later Celtic tribe of the same name who lived on the coast of Brittany and fought against Julius Caesar.

He further suggested that the identification of the Adriatic Veneti with the Paphlagonian Enetoi led by Antenor—which he attributes to Sophocles (496–406 BC)—was a mistake due to the similarity of the names.

Strabo records that Dionysius I of Syracuse (c. 432–367 BC), desiring the famed horses of the Veneti, founded trading colonies along the Adriatic coast.

[21] The Veneti were in recurring conflict with the Celtic peoples who then occupied most of Northwestern Italy, although they maintained peaceful relations with the Cenomani Celts who had settled in and eventually absorbed the areas of Brescia and Verona.

[34] Other tribes originally thought to have been Illyrians and shown to be actually related to the Veneti are: Histri,[35] Carni,[35] Catari,[36] Catali,[37] Liburni,[35] Lopsi,[38] Secusses,[39] Venetulani.