Roman Proske

To my knowledge he wrote nothing other than his autobiography. the book is pretty bad, if his life wasn't so interesting, the book would be outright hopeless. The play-by-play is great, but the color is lacking. His observations are few, leaving the text thin. But once, he makes a strange poetic observation.

"The thought that my lions were housed in the same den that had been occupied by the lions of Rome two thousand years before, that I was treading the same ground where the spectacle of the circus had it's origins, moved me deeply. I felt a kinship with more forebears, the gladiators, so long turned to dust, who had once faced death here, and triumphed or gone under. This dry, sunbaked earth that had known the taste of blood of men and beasts was sacred to me."

The lions are no metaphor. He was a lion tamer. But when first browsing, I didn't know that. I think as much as I like it, I liked it better when the lions were a vague idea of something regal but menacing.