One of the most intriguing things that I have come across multiple times in studying Caesar's campaigns in Gaul / Britain is the difficulty he faced confronting the seafaring Venetii -- particularly mention is made of their strongholds which are described in numerous sources in a way that sounds like some kind of floatilla or a network of docks? Possibly even such that they were rendered islands during certain tidal shifts, accessible only by ship?
My question is -- what is the reality of these fortresses? What did they look like? Were they a network of docks and catwalks on pylons? I have failed to find any imagery that attempts to reconstruct or portray what they might have looked like - but it sounds particularly fascinating and inventive and I'm interested if anyone has any more clarity as to what these fortresses of Venetii were really like.
Thanks in advance!!
This is a fun but also tricky question. Fun, because Caesar gives us a very engaging description of these settlements. Tricky for two reasons, both having to do with sources.
The first of these is that, as far as I am aware, Caesar is the only source from antiquity that we have that actually describes Venetic settlements. The Celts left no written descriptions of the spaces. We also have no prior Roman or Greek attestations and it is likely that all subsequent ancient authors who talk about the Gallic Veneti (Pliny, Strabo, Ptolemy) were using Caesar as their reference point and don’t represent any independent/new information. Because of this, we have no other literary corroboration of what these spaces may have looked like.
The second reason is that we have no archaeological evidence of the type of settlements Caesar describes. Since these spaces existed more or less off shore, it is unlikely we ever will, given how wood deteriorates in water over time. Hypothetically, should Caesar’s account be accurate, we might be able to find the base of some pilings preserved in mud, but if they are there it’s a hunt for a needle in a haystack (or rotting wood pilings along a coastline under 2000 years of accumulated mud).
It’s doubtful that Caesar purely invented the ingenuity of the Veneti in designing their settlements but it is also doubtful that they were as remarkable as advertised. Caesar has a tendency to play up the difficulty of his conquests and the unusual nature of his foes to raise his stock with his Roman audience. To complicate matters, at the end of DBG 3.16 Caesar related that after the defeat of the Veneti their leaders were executed and the rest of the populace sold into slavery. While this is likely hyperbole (Caesar later says in DBG 7.75 that Vercingetorix demanded soldiers from the Atlantic tribes, including the Veneti) it is not unlikely that war with Caesar took a heavy toll on the Veneti and it is an open question whether the survivors would have stayed in their off-shore settlements or moved elsewhere. Whatever happened, I would very much doubt that a traveler from Rome visiting the area during the reign of Augustus a generation or two later would see anything like what Caesar described, had those descriptions been a faithful account.