The Spanish Bull-Fight 193 
anemic, there still remained (as always) a residue of bold 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 
the Moors “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 
jfiesta 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 
conflict 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 fiesta of Spain to-day. 
fe) 
