ABSTRACT
Which of us does not recall the horrified fascination we felt as children when looking at those pictures in our school-books which came between the lowly dwellings of our ancestors the Gauls and the picturesque escarpments on which the first keeps of the Middle Ages were built? A gladiator, with movements clumsy and stiff because of his armour, half kneels and raises his hooked vizor, pierced by mysterious holes, towards an imaginary grandstand, menacing with his curved sword the man prostrate at his feet. His calm, the restraint of his gestures, his indifference, are among the things which particularly excite childish wonder. In another picture a lioness leaps upon a condemned man whose almost transparent robe still flutters on the sand; farther on, some vague figures crowd together at the approach of another wild beast; or perhaps the beast crouches, satiated, its paws doubled up over a shapeless mass, aloof and sullenly watching the dense throng of onlookers.
