AFTERNOON SESSION.
1. “A Pilgrimage Through Italy”—An illustrated lecture. Miss Clara L. Thompson, Mary Institute, St. Louis.
2. Reports of Committees: (a) Committee on History in High Schools of Missouri, E. M. Violette, State Normal, Kirksville; (b) Committee on History in the Elementary Schools of Missouri, Superintendent O’Rear, Boonville.
3. Election of Officers.
4. General Business.
NEW ENGLAND ASSOCIATION MEETING.
The annual spring meeting of the New England Association was held in Boston on Saturday, April 16, 1910, in the lecture hall of the Boston Public Library. The morning session was devoted to Roman history and to the report of the Committee on Historical Material. The opening address was by Professor Henry A. Sill, of Cornell University, who spoke on “Some New Points of View in Roman History.” Just one hundred years ago Niebuhr began the epoch of modern critical historiography, and for the first time applied the test of modern criticism to the mass of tradition which passed current as Roman history. Forty years later Mommsen took up the task, and in 1854 published his first volume. The works of both writers were rapid and bold, but they were works of genius and of intuition. The speaker then considered certain characteristics of Mommsen’s work, among others specifying his comprehensiveness, his thorough use of the sources, and especially his modern tone. Mommsen did not make direct references to modern politics, but through indirect references sought to make the Romans step down from their pedestals and become real. We owe it to Mommsen’s history that Rome does not seem a land of fancy.
Although Mommsen made over one thousand contributions with a total of more than twenty thousand pages, he did not speak the final word. Recently several attempts have been made to sum up the result of the numerous special investigations which have been made since Mommsen’s time, the speaker making mention of Pais, Ferrero, and especially of Edouard Meyer, whom he termed the master of all. Of American writers Professor Botsford has made a notable contribution in his “Roman Assemblies.” Among the periods of Roman history which are being rewritten are the Foreign Wars, the history to the fourth century B.C., and the Revolution. Among the new points of view, Professor Sill enumerated the influence of imperialism, war and its effects on domestic policy, sea-power, international arbitration, capitalism, and added that we might even have a pathological view of Roman history! In conclusion, he cautioned against pushing analogy too far.
Professor Sill’s paper was discussed briefly by Professor H. B. Wright, of Yale University, and Professor W. S. Ferguson, of Harvard University, the latter citing an interesting dissertation by a Roumanian teacher on the nationality of the business men of Rome and the light it threw on certain problems of Roman history.