218

SENSATIONAL ACROBATIC FEATS

side of the sport, as occasionally in the 'Wild West' of America to-day, has
been shown from a scene on a Vapheio Cup,1 but the elegance and
ornaments of the female acrobats
shown in the ' Taureador Frescoes'
belong to a different sphere. The
ribbons and beaded necklaces are
quite out of place in rock-set glens
or woodland o-lades. To the Palace

o

circus they are more appropriate. The
animals themselves were no doubt
carefully trained. Like the bulls of
the Spanish arenas they may often pIG i49
have been of established pedigree and somersault.

Acrobat Executing Back-
to BE CAUGHT BY FIGURE BE-

, • hind. Temple Repository, Knossos.
reared in special herds or ganaaerias.

It is clear that in all these scenes the

attentionof theMinoanartist is largely

centred on the animal itself, which is

rendered of disproportionate size, as

befitting what was to them evidently

quite as much as the lion, the King

of Beasts.

Tumbler That the particular feat, in which

female by a tumbler executes a back-somersault

atten- over the bull's body to be caught by
another performer behind, already
formed part of the programme of the
shows before the close of the Third
Middle Minoan Period is attested by
a clay sealing found in the Temple
Repositories (Fig. 149). A figure here turns a somersault from the beast's
neck while a second behind, apparently intended for a girl, raises an arm as
if to catch the other. On an agate intaglio,2 of somewhat later date
(Fig. 150), we see a curious version of a similar scene as adapted to the filling
of a circular space. There are here two galloping bulls, over the back of
one of which the youth turns a somersault, in this case facing towards the
bull's tail. The figure behind, in which again we may recognize a girl, is
placed upside down, owing to the exigencies of the circular border, and has

1 See above p. 182 and Fig. 123, a. in Athens and said to have been found in the

2 In my collection. The stone was bought Peloponnese.

Fig. 150.

Analogous Scene to above.
Agate Intaglio.