The language of the upper Italian Veneti [1] is known through 270 inscriptions written between the 5th and the 1st cents. BC. The most important sites are Este (more than 120 inscr.), Padua (23), and Lágole di Cadore (Calalzo) in the upper Piave valley (66); individual finds reach all the way to Vicenza in the west, in the north into the Gail valley and in the east to the Isonzo in Slovenia (see map).
A small number of the most recent texts is written in Latin script, all others in the Venetic alphabet, which had been redesigned from an Etruscan alphabe…