Spice spices. Spices were among the most demanded and expensive products available in Europe in the Middle Ages, the most common being black pepper, cinnamon (and the cheaper alternative cassia), cumin, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. Given medieval medicine's main theory of humorism, spices and herbs were indispensable to balance "humors" in food, a daily basis for good health at a time of recurrent pandemics. In addition to being desired by those using medieval medicine, the European elite also craved spices in the Middle Ages. An example of the European aristocracy's demand for spice comes from the King of Aragon, who invested
Via Cassia 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." There are the remains