The Spanish Bull-Fight 193 



anaemic, tliere still remained (as always) a residue of ])old spirits 

 who, scorning decadent circumstance, turned intuitively to that 

 virile and dangerous exercise left them as a heritage by the 

 vanished Moors. 



For it was the Arab conquerors, the so-called Moors, who first 

 practised this form of vicarious warfare. It was, however, in no 

 sense as a sport — far less as a popular pastime — that the fierce 

 Arab had risked equal chances with the fiercest wild beast of the 

 Spanish plain. No, it was strictly as a substitute and a preparation 

 for the sterner realities of war that, during the intervals of peace, 

 the Moois "kept their hands in" by fighting bulls. 



The object was to keep themselves and their chargers fit, their 

 eyesight true, and muscles toughened for the further struggles 

 that all knew must follow. But during those intervals of peace, 

 the rival knights, Christian and Moslem, met in keen competition 

 with lance and sword on the enclosed arena of the bull-ring. The 

 conclusion of a truce was frequently celebrated by holding a joint 

 fiesta de toros. 



No trace, however, exists in Arab writings to show that these 

 people possessed any innate love of bull-fighting as a sport, or 

 ever practised it save only as an accessory to the art of war. 



No other people of ancient race have had exhibitions of this 

 kind — that is, where the skill of man was invoked to incite a 

 beast to attack in certain desired modes ; while the performer 

 escaped the onset, and finally slew his adversary, by preconceived 

 forms of defence governed by set rules — a spectacle wherein the 

 assembled crowd could, each according to his light, estimate both 

 the skill of the man and the fighting quality of the beast. That 

 the blood of many a gladiator dyed the Roman arena at the horns 

 of bulls is certain : but no artistic embellishments of attack or 

 defence added to the joy of the Roman holiday. The mere 

 mechanical instinct of self-preservation may inadvertently have 

 suggested to individual combatants certain combinations in the 

 conHict that in later days have been utilised by modern 

 matadors; but it seems hardly possible to suppose that Roman 

 gladiators saved themselves by methods of prescribed art. Con- 

 temporary records, together with the scenes depicted on coinage, 

 represent rather a mere massacre of men by brute force ; and 

 such cannot bear any relation to the conditions that govern the 



national ^esto of Spain to-day. 







