The Via Cassia intersected other important roads. At mile 11 the
Via Clodia diverged north-north-west. At
Sette Vene, another road, probably the
Via Annia, branched off to
Falerii. In Sutrium, the Via Ciminia split off and later rejoined.[3]
The date of its construction is uncertain: it cannot have been earlier than 187 BC, when the consul
Gaius Flaminius constructed a road from
Bononia to
Arretium, which must have coincided with a portion of the later Via Cassia. It is not mentioned by any ancient authorities before the time of
Cicero, who in 45 BC speaks of the existence of three roads from Rome to Mutina: the Flaminia, the Aurelia and the Cassia. A milestone of AD 124 mentions repairs to the road made by
Hadrian from the boundary of the territory of
Clusium to Florentia, a distance of 86 miles (138 km).[4]
Via Amerina
The Via Amerina was a road that broke off from the Via Cassia near Baccanae, and held north through
Falerii,
Tuder, and
Perusia, rejoining the Via Cassia at Clusium. When the incursions of
Faroald, the Lombard
Duke of Spoleto, cut the
Via Flaminia, the lifeline between Rome and Ravenna, the Via Amerina was improved and fortified at intervals, works that represented some of the last road-building carried out in Italy in
late antiquity. As the new military and strategic route, the Via Amerina "became the communications core of Imperial Italy and the chief support to the claim that imperial Italy was still extant".[5]
^Jan T. Hallenbeck, "Pavia and Rome: The Lombard Monarchy and the Papacy in the Eighth Century" Transactions of the American Philosophical Society New Series 72.4 (1982 pp. 1-186) p 8.