The bull fight is older than Spain; the art of the bull fight has little more than a hundred years of history. Perhaps Crete, which gave El Greco to Toledo, gave the bull worship to Tartessos. Perhaps the Romans turned the bull rite into spectacle. The Visigoths assuredly had bull fights: and the medieval lords of Spain jousted with bulls as Amadis with dragons. The _toreo_ was held in the public squares of towns, alternating possibly with _autos de fe_. In the one sport, the actors were nobles and the victims were bulls. In the other, officiated captains of the Church and the victims were Jews. In both, the religious norm was more or less lost sight of, as the spectacular appeal grew greater. But no æsthetic norm had been evolved to take its place. The bull fight was a daredevil game to which the young bloods of the Court--in their lack of Moors to fight--became addicted after the Reconquest. It was a dangerous sport, and it cost the kings of Spain many good horses and not a few good soldiers. Still, it throve until in 1700 a puritan, Philip V, ascended to the throne. He disliked the bull fight. It lost caste among the nobles. But its usage was too deeply, too immemorially engrained. The gentleman _toreador_ went out: the professional _torero_ and _banderillero_ came in. Francisco Goya has recorded in genial sketches and engravings the nature of this bull fight. It was still chiefly a game of prowess. If an art, it was more allied to the art of the clown and acrobat than to the dance or the drama. The professional torero was a gymnast. He had to risk his skin in elaborate ways: and skill was primarily confined to his grace in going off unhurt. He fought the bull, hobbled on a table, or lashed to a chair, or riding a forerunner in a coach, or saddled to another bull. Only after the War of Independence against the French and after the lapse caused by Napoleon, whose generals disapproved of so barbarous an art, did Spain’s popular tragedy arise: the modern, profound _corrida_. Its birthday was the same as that of the jota of Aragon which sprang directly from the incitement against the French. Like the jota, the bull fight was new only as an integration of old elements. And like the ancient bull-rite of Tartessos it reached its climax in Andalusia: more particularly in the Province of Seville. * * * * * The _plaza de toros_ is of course the Roman circus. Rome created no more powerful form for an æsthetic action than this rounded, human mass concentered on sand and blood. With its arena, the bull fight wins a vantage over such western spectacles as cricket, baseball, the theater. In all of these, the audience is a partial unit: it is not above the action, but beside it. The arena of the bull fight is a pith of passion, wholly fleshed by the passionate human wills around it.