18 Ethnographical Memoir on the Nations of Slavonian Race. 



the Slavi who succeeded them obtained the name of Wends, owing to tl»© 

 circumstance of their occupying a country which had belonged to the origi- 

 nalj or German Wenedae. A strong objection to this opinion is the fact, 

 that JVends, as we have said, is a very general name for the Slavonic 

 tribes, among their German neighbours. They are called Wends on the 

 coast of the Baltic, and Wends, or Winds, in the provinces lying south- 

 ward of Hungary. Without entering further into this discussion at present, 

 I shall merely cite the passages in which the earlier Wenedae are mentioned 

 by Ptolemy, Pliny, and Tacitus. 



The first of these writers, in his description of Sarmatia and the nations 

 who inhabited it, has these words : " KaTt^n ce r>/v ^apuariay edyt] juf'yiora, 

 o'l re OvivEcai, Trap b\ov tov OvevEhiKov KoXirov, ku\ virtp t))v AaKt'av 

 HtvKivoi re /cat BaaTctpvai." " Great nations inhabit Sarmatia (or the coun- 

 tries beyond the Vistula), the Wenedae, along the whole coast of the 

 AVenedicgulph, (meaning the Baltic,) and above Dacia, the Peucini, and 

 Bastarnae," Ptolemy, in another passage, speaks of the Wenedae as occu- 

 pying the bank of the Vistula. 



Pliny terms a part of the Transvistulan region Finningia, or the country 

 of the Finns, but without defining its extent. In reality, the Finnish race were 

 and are still extensively spread to the southward of the Baltic, and although 

 now subdued by Slavonian nations, were long an independent and distinct 

 people, having a language, religion, and manners, of their own. Pliny says, 

 "Neither is the country of Finningia of less extent than it is supposed to 

 be. Some say that these regions are inhabited up to the Vistula by the 

 Sarmatians, the Venedi, the Scyri, and the Hirri." 



The Venedi, or AVenedae, are more fully described by Tacitus, whose 

 account I must extract, after remarking that this accurate and philosophi- 

 cal writer lay under the disadvantage of believing that there were only two 

 nations in the eastern parts of Europe ; and that it was necessary to refer 

 every tribe to one of two divisions, either that of the German or the Sarmatic 

 race. Yet it is certain that neither Finns nor Slavonians belonged to either. 



" I am in doubt whether to reckon the Peucini, Venedi, and Fenni among 

 the Germans or the Sarmatae, although the Peucini, who are by some called 

 Bastarnae, agree with the Germans in language, apparel, and habitations. 

 All of them live in filth and laziness. The intermarriages of their chiefs 

 with the Sarmatians, have debased them by a mixture of the manners of 

 that people. The Venedi have drawn much from this source : for they 

 overrun, in their predatory excursions, all the woody and mountainous 

 tracts between the Peucini and Fenni. Yet even these are rather to be 

 referred to the Germans, since they build houses, carry shields, and travel 

 with speed on foot : in all which particulars, they totally differ from the 

 Sarmatians, who pass their time in waggons and on horseback. The Fenni 

 live in a state of amazing savageness and squalid poverty. They are 

 destitute of arms, horses, and settled abodes ; their food is herbs ; their 



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