The term Vénètes indicates two or three homonymous ancient people.
One is one of the Gallic Peuples. It resided in the current Morbihan and gave its name to the town of Vannes. The other lived in Venezia and gave its name to Venice. He spoke a Italic Langue, the Vénète. They are frequently regarded as being of the same origin than Vénètes de Gaulle. This theory is based on the linguistic resemblances present inter alia in the Onomastique, but these common features can also be explained by the close family ties which exist between the Italic languages and the Celtic languages. The linguistic data thus do not make it possible to slice in favor of any of these two assumptions. Let us note that the name of Vénètes is also identical to that given by the Germains to people of Central Europe which will be finally slavisé, the Wendes.
By their considerable navy, their nautical superiority good recognized and their commercial relations with the island of Brittany, Vénètes had become very powerful people, whose authority extended to far on all the littoral from Gaulle and Brittany Insulaire. They had a small number of ports located on this sea open and stormy with long distances from/to each other and made tributary almost all the navigators obliged to pass in their water| War of Gaules , III, 8| Jules César
Vénètes, powerful and influential maritime and commercial power, as later will be to it Venice or Saint Malo, had a strong organization and were equipped with a Sénat and had in particular an important fleet to trade with the British Isles and the Italy of which it diffused the wine and the oil (that the Romans convoyaient in Armorique since Bordeaux) in Armorique and insular Brittany starting from Vannes and of the current Malouine area, in particular with Hengistbury Head (not far from Bournemouth in the current Dorset) and with which it sold inter alia productions the Armorican saltings and pork-butcheries already well known and appreciated with Rome in addition to the tin, the Lead and the Copper of the large island.
More in the south of the Aremorica there were the Namnètes which remained in the mouth of the the Loire and gave their name to the town of Nantes. Namnètes are called “Samnites” by Strabon and Ptolémée. Namnètes were for a long time a simple tribe of Vénètes.
The Pictons were hostile in Vénètes as one can deduce it from their connection with the proconsul Jules César as of his first countryside and from the ships built or provided to the Romans by them, the Santons Gallic and other people to facilitate the ruin of Vénètes to them.
In 56 av. J. - C., the ships of Jules César provided by other Gallic people destroy the fleet vénète during the Bataille of Morbihan. The Parliament passed through the weapons and the women and the children sold like slaves.
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