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The eastern portion of the plain north of the Po, nearly from Verona to the coast, was possessed by the Veneti, a race different from the Celts and probably of Illyrian extraction.
Caesar was present at the naval battle between his own fleet and that of the Veneti, in the Gulf of Morbihan, and if the megalithic monuments of Carnac were then there, would they not have arrested the attention of the great captain?
First comes a faint echo from distant ages, of those ancient Veneti, who were powerful almost a thousand years before the present Venice came into existence; then a vision of the old Paduans, fleeing from their once wealthy city before the devastating conqueror Attila.
The Tribes at the Sources of the Rhine and along the Danube Helvetii Boii Taurisci Cerni Raeti, Euganei, Veneti
The feathers of the German geese were preferred to all others at Rome; and amber formed a most important article of traffic. This was found in great abundance on the Baltic shore of Germany: at first, it seems to have been carried the whole length of the continent, to the Veneti, who forwarded it to Rome.
Nevertheless the Celts persevered, with an energy which in their circumstances was unparalleled, for seven months beneath the rock, and the garrison, which had escaped a surprise on a dark night only in consequence of the cackling of the sacred geese in the Capitoline temple and the accidental awaking of the brave Marcus Manlius, already found its provisions beginning to fail, when the Celts received information as to the Veneti having invaded the Senonian territory recently acquired on the Po, and were thus induced to accept the ransom money that was offered to procure their withdrawal.
By this dreadful fate, as well as by their intelligence and their patriotism, the Veneti have more than any other Celtic clan acquired a title to the sympathy of posterity.
We have something still left of the pagan cruelty about us when we send triumphant words of the numbers slain on the field of battle. We cannot but remember that Cæsar had killed the whole Senate of the Veneti, a nation dwelling on the coast of Brittany, and had sold all the people as slaves, because they had detained the messengers he had sent to them during his wars in Gaul.
The Veneti used iron cables; hence we see that what is generally deemed an invention entirely modern, was known to a savage nation in Gaul, in the time of Caesar.
The Celts had already been under the necessity of leaving a garrison at home to face the Cenomani and Veneti, who were allied with Rome; now the levy of the Umbrians was directed to advance from their native mountains down into the plain of the Boii, and to inflict all the injury which they could think of on the enemy upon his own soil.
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