Italy has been and still is the scene of unprecedented archaeological activity ; and it was not unnatural that this fact should lead to the holding of a succession of congresses during the Spring. Rome, as was only fitting, opened the ball on the 2628th anniversary of her birthday, the 21st of April, with the first national congress of Roman Studies.

Very wisely the organizing committee decided, as also did the Etruscan committee two years before, to regard this as a sort of preliminary canter to an international congress to be held, I believe, in 1930, the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Vergil ; and therefore to confine it in the main to Italians—though various foreign scholars resident in Rome were invited to take part, and several of them read papers.