Antes (Antae; Anty; Ants)

Antes is the name applied by ancient historians to a group of uncertain ethnicity who, sometime before the fifth century c. e., migrated southeastward to north of the Black Sea in southern Ukraine and Moldova, possibly from a homeland north of the Carpathian Mountains in present-day eastern Poland and western Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The Greek form of the name is Antae and the Ukrainian, Anty Antes is not a Slavonic word and may have been given to or adopted by a proto-Slavic people who had come under the domination of another group.

The name Antes was later given to the first Slavs mentioned in written records, who appeared on the northern borders of the Eastern Roman Empire of the Byzantines along the Danube River in the sixth century c. e. The other main group of these Slavs were called Sclaveni by the Greeks, although these two were said to have been formerly united in a group called the Sporoi (close to a Slavic word for multitude). Slavs who settled to the west became known as Wends, a name derived by early medieval writers, especially Franks, from the collective name Venedi. Greeks and Romans applied the name Venedi to all peoples living in eastern Europe, and Sclaveni to those to the southwest, although the exact makeup and geographies of these classifications are uncertain.

Starting in the 520s, along with the Sclaveni, the Antes, known from contemporary Roman accounts (who again are only tentatively identified with the fourth-century group of the same name), carried out raids on the Byzantines of the Eastern Roman Empire, reaching as far southwest as the Balkan Peninsula later in the century Many of them settled in present-day Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and merged with Southern Slavs. In the late sixth and early seventh centuries, the Antes were defeated in a number of engagements by the Avars, another people out of Asia, leading to their further dispersal and the disappearance of their name from the historical record. Some of them reportedly became part of a tribal federation among the Eastern Slavs known as the Dulebians.