The Vistula Veneti, also called Baltic Veneti were an Indo-European peoples that inhabited the lands of central Europe east of the Vistula River and the Bay of Gdańsk. First mentioned in the 1st century AD by ancient Roman geographers who differentiated a group of peoples whose manner and language differed from that of the neighbouring Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine historians described the Veneti as the ancestors of the Slavs who during the second phase of the Migration Period crossed the northern frontiers 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 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):
Here Suebia 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 and the Fenni. 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 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 to Lake Musianus, the location of which is unclear, but which has been variously identified with Lake Constance, the Tisa–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 [these people] have now three names, that is Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni" and noting that they, at one time, had been conquered by the Goths under Ermanaric. 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.