The bronze is Roman, from the Albani Collection, and it sits now in the Louvre’s antiquities hall on a plinth of dark marble, moving through nothing. The lion has one paw resting on a sphere — the globe, the world, the totality of things worth possessing — and the posture is neither aggressive nor relaxed. It is the posture of ownership. The sphere is already subdued. The question of whether anything else needs subduing remains open. This is not a lion that has just won. This is a lion that expects to win.