Two viae Anniae are known, in Etruria and near Aquileia; another has been reasonably conjectured between Capua and Rhegium. The Etruscan Annia was a minor road and is of only peripheral importance, but the relationship of the other two roads and the date (or dates) of their construction have provoked lively discussion in Italy in the last ten years. The question is a complicated one, and perhaps does not admit of a decisive solution. However, one answer to it has recently found widespread acceptance, and I believe that an alternative suggestion, even if not formally provable, may justifiably be put forward in order to prevent the current theory from crystallising into dogma.
The current theory, which rests on the powerful authority of Professor Degrassi, is that P. Popillius C.f.P.n. Laenas, cos. 132, built both the Capua-Rhegium road and the Via Popillia from Ariminum up the Venetian coast at least as far as Atria, where the milestone bearing his name was found; before his programme was fully carried out, however, Popillius' term of office ended and the commission was transferred to a praetor of the next year, T. Annius Rufus, who extended the Venetian road from Atria or Patavium to Aquileia and completed the road to Rhegium by setting up milestones, one of which was found near Vibo Valentia several years ago. Prof. Degrassi thus accepts Mommsen's identification of P. Popillius Laenas as the author of the acephalous elogium at Polla set up by the man who built the Capua-Rhegium road, and rightly rejects Mommsen's suggestion that the Venetian Via Annia ran northwards into Noricum.