SYMBOLICAL EXPRESSION AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
ANCIENT HISTORY AND POETRY COMMINGLED.
In Homer’s beautiful description of the parting of Hector from his wife and child upon returning to the field of battle, occurs a touching recital of paternal affection and solicitude (Iliad, vi.). The passage is so beautiful that we quote it at length:
“Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
Stretched his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse’s breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest;
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hastened to relieve his child,
The glittering terrors from his brows unbound,
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground,
Then kissed the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferred a father’s prayer.
“‘O thou! whose glory fills th’ ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers, protect my son!
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country’s foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
So when, triumphant from successful toils,
Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may hail him with deserved acclaim,
And say, This chief transcends his father’s fame.’”
The grief of the venerable Priam upon learning of the death of his favorite son, Hector, at the hands of Achilles, and his journey to the Grecian camp to beg of Achilles the body of Hector for burial, are portrayed with equal force (Iliad, xxiv.). The Trojan monarch, prostrating himself before the warrior,
“Embraced his knees, and bathed his hands in tears;
Those direful hands his kisses pressed, imbrued
E’en with the best, the dearest of his blood.”
In the course of his entreaty, which completely softens Achilles, the suppliant says:
“Think of thy father, and this face behold!
See him in me, as helpless and as old!
Though not so wretched: there he yields to me,
The first of men in sovereign misery!
Thus forced to kneel, thus grovelling to embrace
The scourge and ruin of my realm and race;
Suppliant my children’s murderer to implore,
And kiss those hands yet reeking with their gore!”
Virgil gives us a picture similar to that of Hector when bidding farewell to his child. Æneas, having recovered from a dangerous wound, returns to the combat with Turnus, first bestowing his blessing upon his son Ascanius (Æneid, xii.):
“Then with a close embrace he strained his son,
And, kissing through his helmet, thus begun:
‘My son! from my example learn the war,
In camps to suffer, and in fields to dare:
But happier chance than mine attend thy care!
This day my hand thy tender age shall shield,
And crown with honors of the conquered field;
Thou, when thy riper years shall send thee forth
To toils of war, be mindful of thy worth:
Assert thy birthright; and in arms be known
For Hector’s nephew, and Æneas’ son.’”
Turning from the camp to the sweets of domestic life, we find in the same charming poet (Georg. ii. 523) these lines:
“His cares are eased with intervals of bliss:
His little children, climbing for a kiss,
Welcome their father’s late return at night;
His faithful bed is crowned with chaste delight.”
Xenophon says, in “Agesilaus” (v. 4), that it was a national custom with the Persians to kiss whomsoever they honored. And Herodotus (i. 134), in speaking of their manners and customs, says, “If Persians meet at any time by accident, the rank of each party is easily discovered: if they are of equal dignity, they salute each other on the mouth; if one is an inferior, they only kiss the cheek; if there be a great difference in situation, the inferior falls prostrate on the ground.” Respecting the mode of salutation between relatives, the following passage from the “Cyropædia” of Xenophon (i. 4) is worth transcribing:
“If I may be allowed to relate a sportive affair, it is said that when Cyrus went away, and he and his relations parted, they took their leave, and dismissed him with a kiss, according to the Persian custom,—for the Persians practise it to this day,—and that a certain Mede, a very excellent person, had been long struck with the beauty of Cyrus, and when he saw Cyrus’s relations kiss him, he stayed behind, and, when the rest were gone, accosted Cyrus, and said to him, ‘And am I, Cyrus, the only one of all your relations that you do not know?’ ‘What!’ said Cyrus, ‘are you a relation?’ ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘This was the reason, then,’ said Cyrus, ‘that you used to gaze at me; for I think I recollect that you frequently did so.’ ‘I was very desirous,’ said he, ‘to salute you, but I was always ashamed to do it.’ ‘But,’ said Cyrus, ‘you that are a relation ought not to have been so.’ So, coming up to him, he kissed him. The Mede, having received the kiss, is said to have, asked this question: ‘And is it a custom among the Persians to kiss relations?’ ‘It is so,’ said Cyrus, ‘when they see one another at some distance of time, or when they part.’ ‘Then,’ said the Mede, ‘it seems now to be time for you to kiss me again; for, as you see, I am just going away.’ So Cyrus, kissing him again, dismissed him, and went his way. They had not gone very far before the Mede came up with him again, with his horse all over in a sweat; and Cyrus, getting sight of him, said, ‘What! have you forgotten anything that you had a mind to say to me?’ ‘No, by Jove,’ said he, ‘but I am come again at a distance of time.’ ‘Dear relation,’ said he, ‘it is a very short time.’ ‘How a short one?’ said the Mede: ‘do you not know, Cyrus, that the very twinkling of my eyes is a long time to be without seeing you, you who are so lovely?’ Here Cyrus, from being in tears, broke out into laughter, bid him go his way and take courage, adding that in a little time he would be with him again, and that then he would be at liberty to look at him, if he pleased, with steady eyes and without twinkling.”
The kiss among the ancients was an essential implement in the armory of love. Virgil, for instance, uses it in the device by which Queen Dido was to be inspired with a passion for Æneas. Venus, in the course of her instructions to Cupid, says:
“Thyself a boy, assume a boy’s dissembled face;
That when, amid the fervor of the feast,
The Tyrian hugs and fonds thee on her breast,
And with sweet kisses in her arms constrains,
Thou mayst infuse thy venom in her veins.”
Horace, in the ode to Lydia, in which he gives such free expression to his jealousy (Ode XIII.), refers with considerable point and feeling to the osculatory attentions of his rival. The following translation is by Bulwer-Lytton:
“When thou the rosy neck of Telephus,
The waxen arms of Telephus, art praising,
Woe is me, Lydia, how my jealous heart
Swells with the anguish I would vainly smother!
“Then in my mind thought has no settled base,
To and fro shifts upon my cheek the color,
And tears that glide adown in stealth reveal
By what slow fires mine inmost self consumeth.
“I burn, whether he quarrel o’er his wine,
Stain with a bruise dishonoring thy white shoulders,
Or whether my boy-rival on thy lips
Leave by a scar the mark of his rude kisses.
“Hope not, if thou wouldst hearken unto me,
That one so little kind prove always constant;
Barbarous indeed, to wound sweet lips imbued
By Venus with a fifth part of her nectar.[1]
“Thrice happy, ay, more than thrice happy, they
Whom one soft bond unbroken binds together;
Whose love serene from bickering and reproach
In life’s last moment finds the first that severs.”
The closing lines of an ode to Mæcenas (Lib. II. Ode XII.) are worth noting:
“Say, for all that Achæmenes boasted of treasure,
All the wealth which Mygdonia gave Phrygia in tribute,
All the stores of all Araby—say, wouldst thou barter
One lock of Lycimnia’s bright hair?
“When at moments she bends down her neck to thy kisses,
Or declines them with coy but not cruel denial,
Rather pleased if the prize be snatched off by the spoiler,
Nor slow in reprisal sometimes.”
Literally, “when she turns to meet the ardent kisses, or with a gentle cruelty denies what she would more delight to have ravished by the petitioner; sometimes she is eager to snatch them herself.”
In the Latin Anthology is an ode to another Lydia, by an unknown poet, but probably Gallus, which breathes throughout the rapturous idolatry of the enamored writer. We have only space for these lines:
“Unveil those rosy cheeks, o’erspread
With blushes of the Tyrian red,
And pout those coral lips of thine,
And breathe the turtle’s kiss on mine;
Deep on my heart you print that kiss,
You melt my wildered soul in bliss.
Ah, softly, girl! thy amorous play
Has sucked my very blood away!
Hide thy twin bosom fruit, just shown
Milk-ripe above thy bursting zone;
Such sweets, as India’s summer gale
Wafts from her spice-beds, they exhale.”
Ovid appropriates the kiss most effectively in his passages descriptive of the endearments, the fascinations, the yearnings, and the transports of love. Briseis in her letter to Achilles, begging him to return to the Grecian camp, is made to say:
“Oh that the Greeks would send me hence to try
If I could make your stubborn heart comply!
Few words I’d use; all should be sighs, and tears,
And looks, and kisses, mixed with hopes and fears;
My love like lightning through my eyes should fly,
And thaw the ice which round your heart does lie;
Sometimes my arms about your neck I’d throw;
And then embrace your knees and humbly bow.
There is more eloquence in tears and kisses
Than in the smooth harangues of sly Ulysses.”[2]
In the letter of Sappho to her lover, Phaon, when he had forsaken her, and she had resolved upon suicide, we have a picture of that “sorrow’s crown of sorrow,” the remembrance in adversity of happier days:
“Yet once your Sappho could your cares employ,
Once in her arms you centred all your joy;
Still all those joys to my remembrance move,
For, oh, how vast a memory has love!
My music then you could forever hear,
And all my words were music to your ear;
You stopped with kisses my enchanting tongue,
And found my kisses sweeter than my song.
The fair Sicilians now your soul inflame:
Why was I born, ye gods, a Lesbian dame?”
A wife’s affection is shown in the letter of Laodanna to her husband at Aulis with the Grecian fleet:
“Yet while before the leaguer thou dost lie,
Thy picture is some pleasure to my eye;
There must be something in it more than art,
’Twere very thee, could it thy mind impart:
I kiss the pretty idol, and complain,
As if (like thee) ’twould answer me again.”
This pretty conceit, which the moderns have often copied from Ovid, occurs in the epistle of Paris to Helen:
“If you your young Hermione but kiss,
Straight from her lips I snatch the envied bliss.”
In his “Art of Love” (Book I.) Ovid thus pursues his course of instruction:
“Tears, too, are of utility: by tears you will move adamant. Make her, if you can, to see your moistened cheeks. If tears shall fail you, for indeed they do not always come in time, touch your eyes with your wet hand. What discreet person will not mingle kisses with tender words? Though she should not grant them, still take them ungranted. Perhaps she will struggle at first, and will say, ‘You naughty man!’ Still, in her struggling she will wish to be overcome. Only, let them not, rudely snatched, hurt her tender lips, and take care that she may not be able to complain that they have proved a cause of pain. He who has gained kisses, if he cannot gain the rest as well, will deserve to lose even that which has been granted him. How much is there wanting for unlimited enjoyment after a kiss! Oh, shocking! ’twere clownishness, not modesty. Call it violence, if you like; such violence is pleasing to the fair; they often wish, through compulsion, to grant what they are delighted to grant.”
Turning from Ovid to the Greek Anthology, we find this epigram:
“The kiss that she left on my lip
Like a dew-drop shall lingering lie:
’Twas nectar she gave me to sip,
’Twas nectar I drank in her sigh!
“The dew that distilled in that kiss
To my soul was voluptuous wine:
Ever since it is drunk with the bliss,
And feels a delirium divine.”
Anacreon, in one of his odes, speaks of the heart flying to the lips; and Plato, in a distich quoted by Aulus Gellius, tells us of the effect of a kiss upon his susceptibility:
“Whene’er thy nectared kiss I sip,
And drink thy breath in melting twine,
My soul then flutters to my lip,
Ready to fly and mix with thine.”
Plato also wrote:
“My soul, when I kissed Agathon, did start
Up to my lips, just ready to depart.”
“Oh! on that kiss my soul,
As if in doubt to stay,
Lingered awhile, on fluttering wing prepared
To fly away.”
Anacreon uses this figurative expression:
“They tainted all his bowl of blisses,
His bland desires and hallowed kisses.”
By the ancient expression “cups of kisses,” reference is most probably made to a favorite gallantry among the Greeks and Romans of drinking when the lips of their mistresses had touched the brim. Ben Jonson’s oft-quoted verses to Celia, in which occur the lines—
“Or leave a kiss within the cup,
And I’ll not ask for wine,”—
are translated from Philostratus, a Greek poet of the second century.
Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea: “that you may at once both drink and kiss.” And Meleager says:
“Blest is the goblet, oh! how blest,
Which Heliodora’s lips have pressed!
Oh! might thy lips but meet with mine,
My soul should melt away in thine.”
Agathias also says:
“I love not wine; but thou hast power
T’ intoxicate at any hour.
Touch first the cup with thine own lip,
Then hand it round for mine to sip,
And temperance at once gives way;
My sweet cup-bearer wins the day.
That cup’s a boat which ferries over
Thy kiss in safety to thy lover,
And tells by its delicious flavor
Plow much it revels in thy favor.”
Longepierre, to give an idea of the luxurious estimation in which garlands were held by the ancients, relates an anecdote of a frail beauty, who, in order to gratify three lovers without leaving cause for jealousy with any of them, gave a kiss to one, let the other drink after her, and put a garland on the brow of the third; so that each was satisfied with his favor, and flattered himself with the preference.
In one of Anacreon’s odes we find the strong and beautiful phrase, “a lip provoking kisses.”
“Then her lip, so rich in blisses,
Sweet petitioner for kisses.”
Tatius speaks of “lips soft and delicate for kissing;” and that grave old commentator, Lambinus, in his notes upon Lucretius, tells us, with all the authority of experience, that girls who have large lips kiss infinitely sweeter than others!
Æneas Sylvius, in his story of the loves of Euryalus and Lucretia, where he particularizes the beauties of the heroine, describes her lips as exquisitely adapted for biting.[3] And Catullus, in his poems (viii.), asks, “Whom will you love now? Whose will you be called? Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite? But you, Catullus, be stubbornly obdurate.” As Lamb has it:
“Whose fondling care shalt thou avow?
Whose kisses now shalt thou return?
Whose lip in rapture bite? But thou,
Hold, hold, Catullus, cold and stern.”
Or, as Elton renders it:
“Whom wilt thou for thy lover choose?
Whose shall they call thee, false one, whose?
Who shall thy darted kisses sip,
While thy keen love-bites scar his lip?
But thou, Catullus, scorn to feel:
Persist—and let thy heart be steel.”
Plautus alludes to this biting;[4] and Horace says (Ode XIII.), as already quoted:
“Or on thy lips the fierce fond boy
Marks with his teeth the furious joy.”
Plutarch tells us that Flora, the mistress of Cn. Pompey, used to say, in commendation of her lover, that she could never quit his arms without giving him a bite. And Tibullus, in his confession of his illicit love for Delia, the wife of another, and of his devices for covering his tracks, says, among other things, “I gave her juices and herbs for removing the livid marks which mutual Venus makes by the impress of the teeth.”
Anacreon finds in the brevity of life arguments for the voluptuary as well as for the moralist:
“Can we discern, with all our lore,
The path we’re yet to journey o’er?
No, no, the walk of life is dark,
’Tis wine alone can strike a spark!
Then let me quaff the foamy tide,
And through the dance meandering glide;
Let me imbibe the spicy breath
Of odors chafed to fragrant death,
Or from the kiss of love inhale
A more voluptuous, richer gale.”
Of the amatory writers who exhaust rhetoric to express the infinity of kisses which they require from the lips of their mistresses, Catullus takes the lead. In his famous verses to Lesbia (Carm. 5), he says:
“Let us live and love, my Lesbia, and a farthing for all the talk of morose old sages! Suns may set and rise again; but we, when once our brief light has set, must sleep through a perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then still another thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we shall have made up many thousands, we will confuse the reckoning, so that we ourselves may not know their amount, nor any spiteful person have it in his power to envy us when he knows that our kisses were so many.”
Roman superstition recognized an occult and mischievous potency in the sentiment of envy. Moreover, there was a prevalent notion that it excited the envy of the gods to count what gave one pleasure.
The following metrical versions of the foregoing are worth a place here. The first is by George Lamb (1821):
“Love, my Lesbia, while we live;
Value all the cross advice
That the surly graybeards give
At a single farthing’s price.
“Suns that set again may rise;
We, when once our fleeting light,
Once our day in darkness dies,
Sleep in one eternal night.
“Give me kisses thousand-fold,
Add to them a hundred more;
Other thousands still be told,
Other hundreds, o’er and o’er.
“But, with thousands when we burn,
Mix, confuse the sums at last,
That we may not blushing learn
All that have between us past.
“None shall know to what amount
Envy’s due for so much bliss;
None—for none shall ever count
All the kisses we will kiss.”
The second is by C. A. Elton, whose translations of the classic poets were first published in 1814:
“Let us, my Lesbia, live and love;
Though the old should disapprove;
Let us rate their saws severe
At the worth of a denier.
Suns can set beneath the main,
And lift their fated, orbs again,
But we, when sets our scanted light,
Must slumber in perpetual night.
Give me, then, a thousand kisses;
Add a hundred billing blisses;
Give me a thousand kisses more;
Then repeat the hundred o’er;
Give me other thousand kisses;
Give me other hundred blisses;
And when thousands now are done,
Let us confuse them every one,
That we the number cannot know,
And none that saw us kissing so
Might glut his envious busy spleen
By counting o’er the kisses that had been.”
In another poem addressed to Lesbia (Carm. 7), Catullus says:
“You ask how many kisses of yours, Lesbia, maybe enough for me; and more. As the numerous sands that lie on the spicy shores of Cyrene, between the oracle of sultry Jove and the sacred tomb of old Battus;[5] or as the many stars that in the silence of night behold men’s furtive amours; to kiss you with so many kisses is enough and more for madly fond Catullus; such a multitude as prying gossips can neither count, nor bewitch with their evil tongues.”
Lamb’s translation is as follows:
“Thy kisses dost thou bid me count,
And tell thee, Lesbia, what amount
My rage for love and thee could tire,
And satisfy and cloy desire?
Many as grains of Libyan sand
Upon Cyrene’s spicy land,
From prescient Ammon’s sultry dome
To sacred Battus’ ancient tomb:
Many as stars that silent ken
At night the stolen loves of men.
Yes, when the kisses thou shalt kiss
Have reached a number vast as this,
Then may desire at length be stayed,
And e’en my madness be allayed,
Then when infinity defies
The calculations of the wise,
Nor evil voice’s deadly charm
Can work the unknown number harm.”
Thomas Moore gives the following exceedingly free rendering of the answer to the question:
“As many stellar eyes of light
As through the silent waste of night,
Gazing upon the world of shade,
Witness some secret youth and maid,
Who, fair as thou, and fond as I,
In stolen joys enamored lie,—
So many kisses, ere I slumber,
Upon those dew-bright lips I’ll number;
So many vermil, honeyed kisses,
Envy can never count our blisses:
No tongue shall tell the sum but mine;
No lips shall fascinate but thine!”
We cannot dismiss Catullus without one more specimen of his osculatory exuberance. In his lines “To My Love” (Carm. 48), he says:
“Were I allowed to kiss your sweet eyes without stint, I would kiss on and on up to three hundred thousand times; nor even then should I ever have enough, not though our crop of kissing were thicker than the dry ears of the cornfield.”
Or in Lamb’s metrical version:
“If, all-complying, thou wouldst grant
Thy lovely eyes to kiss, my fair,
Long as I pleased, oh! I would plant
Three hundred thousand kisses there.
“Nor could I even then refrain,
Nor satiate leave that fount of blisses,
Though thicker than autumnal grain
Should be our growing crop of kisses.”
Martial, in his “Epigrams,” bestows a variety of attentions upon the promiscuous custom of kissing in Rome, as he found it in his day. In an epigram addressed to his friend Flaccus (xii. 98), he complains in very strong and very amusing terms of the persistent salutes of a certain class, who paid no heed whatever to times and seasons, places and circumstances, but broke through all forms and guards and conventional restraints.
On another occasion he pointed his invective in this manner (xii. 59):
“Rome gives, on one’s return after fifteen years’ absence, such a number of kisses as exceeds those given by Lesbia to Catullus. Every neighbor, every hairy-faced farmer, presses on you with a strongly-scented kiss. Here the weaver assails you, there the fuller and the cobbler, who has just been kissing leather; here the owner of a filthy beard, and a one-eyed gentleman; there one with bleared eyes, and fellows whose mouths are defiled with all manner of abominations. It was hardly worth while to return.”
His epigram to Linus (vii. 95) is rarely exceeded in its sarcastic severity. It closes in this manner:
——“No doubt,
Th’ icicles hanging at thy dog-like snout,
The congealed snivel dangling on thy beard,
Ranker than th’ oldest goat of all the herd.
The nastiest mouth in town I’d rather greet,
Than with thy flowing frozen nostrils meet.
If therefore thou hast either shame or sense,
Till April comes no kisses more dispense.”
The satirist thus pays his respects to a lady whose physical attractions do not appear to have had much charm for his fastidious taste:
“In vain, fond Philænis, thou woo’st my embrace:
Bald, carrotty, one-eyed, thy tripartite grace!
The wretch, poor Philænis, that would thee salute,
Can never aspire to the buss of a brute.”
(ii. 33.)
And again:
“Why on my chin a plaster clapped?
Besalved my lips that are not chapped?
Philænis, why? The cause is this:
Philænis, thee I will not kiss.”
(x. 22).
The illustrious Postumus comes in for a share of repugnance in this delicate fashion. We give the literal translation:
“I commend you, Postumus, for kissing me with only half your lip; you may, however, if you please, withhold even the half of this half. Are you inclined to grant me a boon still greater, and even inexpressible? Keep this whole half entirely to yourself, Postumus.” (ii. 10.)
And elsewhere, thus:
“To some, Postumus, you give kisses, to some your right hand. ‘Which do you prefer?’ you say: ‘choose.’ I prefer your hand.”
In another place (iii. 53) Martial addresses Chloe in this ungallant and uncourtly style:
“I could do without your face, and your neck, and your hands, and your limbs, and your bosom, and other of your charms. Indeed, not to fatigue myself with enumerating each of them, I could do without you, Chloe, altogether.”
This brusquerie has been imitated by Thomas Moore in the following manner:
“I could resign that eye of blue,
Howe’er its splendor used to thrill me;
And e’en that cheek of roseate hue—
To lose it, Chloe, scarce would kill me.
“That snowy neck I ne’er should miss,
However much I’ve raved about it;
And sweetly as that lip can kiss,
I think I could exist without it.
“In short, so well I’ve learned to fast,
That sooth, my love, I know not whether
I might not bring myself at last
——To do without you altogether.”
On the other hand, when it comes to the kisses of his favorite (xi. 8), Martial indulges in the following exuberant fancy:
“The fragrance of balsam extracted from aromatic trees; the ripe odor yielded by the teeming saffron; the perfume of fruits mellowing in their winter repository; or of the flowery meadows in the vernal season; or of silken robes of the empress from her Palatine wardrobes; of amber warmed by the hand of a maiden; of a jar of dark Falernian wine, broken and scented from a distance; of a garden that attracts the Sicilian bees; of the alabaster jars of Cosmus, and the altars of the gods; of the chaplet just fallen from the brow of the luxurious;—but why should I mention all these things singly? not one of them is enough by itself; mix all together,[6] and you have the perfume of the morning kisses of my favorite. Do you want to know the name? I will only tell you of the kisses. You swear to be secret. You want to know too much, Sabinus.”
One more selection from Martial (vi. 34) will suffice for this branch of our subject:
“Give me, Diadumenus, close kisses. ‘How many?’ you say. You bid me count the waves of the ocean, the shells scattered on the shores of the Ægean Sea, the bees that wander on Attic Hybla, or the voices and clappings that resound in the full theatre when the people suddenly see the countenance of the emperor. I should not be content even with as many as Lesbia, after many entreaties, gave to the witty Catullus: he wants but few who can count them.”
The following imitation was written by Sir C. Hanbury Williams:
“Come, Chloe, and give me sweet kisses,
For sweeter sure girl never gave;
But why, in the midst of my blisses,
Do you ask me how many I’d have?
“I’m not to be stinted in pleasure;
Then, prithee, my charmer, be kind,
For, while I love thee above measure,
To numbers I’ll ne’er be confined.
“Count the bees that on Hybla are playing;
Count the flowers that enamel its fields;
Count the flocks that on Tempe are straying;
Or the grain that rich Sicily yields.
“Go number the stars in the heaven;
Count how many sands on the shore:
When so many kisses you’ve given,
I still shall be craving for more.
“To a heart full of love let me hold thee,
To a heart which, dear Chloe, is thine;
With my arms I’ll forever enfold thee,
And twist round thy limbs like a vine.
“What joy can be greater than this is?
My life on thy lips shall be spent;
But the wretch that can number his kisses
With few will be ever content.”