The other "Venedi" of the Tabula Peutingeriana

From: george knysh
Message: 67886
Date: 2011-07-01

The ones that are mentioned in a list of peoples "beyond" the northernmost important city of Roman Dacia, Porolissum. Again one must be careful here. The TP gives the impression that this list (= PITI. GAETAE. DAGAE. VENEDI) follows the flow of the Danube eastward, and hence the VENEDI would be located near its Black Sea outlet. This BTW is what led the interesting Belorusan historian/archaeologist V. Nosewich to identify these VENEDI with the "Etulia culture" of that spot (2nd through 4th centuries: a mixture of LaTene, Late Scythian, and Late Zarubinian elements) Cf. his recent article at http://vln.by/node/178 (with great maps!).

But there is another possibility, viz., that the list represents peoples to the north of Porolissum. The TP is quite schematic. If the extant version is indeed datable to the early 330's in this form, then it might have been drawn in the wake of Constantine's temporary reconquest of Roman Dacia from the Goths in 332 (Didn't last long, but at least to 337 and some few years beyond). Which justified the retention of the old Dacian road system on the map, with one route leading to Tivisco, another to Sarmizegetuza, and a third to Napoca (today's Cluj in Transylvania) and Porolissum. Then came the list, which has been plausibly reconstructed as (GE)PITI (=Gepids), Goths, Dacians, and Venedi, members of the defeated 332 Gothic alliance. The rest of the TP information is typically hazy but quite understandable for the 330's. Contact with the northern Black Sea coast had been effectively lost for generations. Tyras and Olbia had been destroyed (they're not on
the map). The Bosporan Kingdom
particulars are thoroughly scrambled. In fact all this portion of the TP shows the north Black Sea coast to have become a sort of "terra incognita" again. We have Germanic names for the Dnister ("Agaling") and the Dnipro ("Nusacus"). This is the heyday of the Chernyakhiv culture. And even the Vistula seems to have become a "Sellania" which flows from the Baltic into the Dnipro/Nusacus (!!). And the Don is "Tanasis Galatiae"...

So I would think that these VENEDI are to be located not so much at the mouth of the Danube, but somewhere in the north, near the Goth-dominated territory, more or less in the area of the Kyivan culture, which is basically the same as the location hinted at by Tacitus, and by Jordanes for the time of Hermanaric. These VENEDI would be Slavs.

A lot of VENEDS/VENETS in 332! All apparently speaking distinct languages.
(a) those of Armorica probably still there
(b) and those of Italy
(c) and those of Latvia
(d) and those of the Oka
(e) and those of Danubian Sarmatia
(f) and the Slavs...
(g) and?...
******