"Alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur."
Virg. Ec. ii. 18.
[18] No doubt she took him by the tips of his ears. This mode of salutation was called χύτρα, the pot-kiss, (alluding to the double handles of a pot.) In after times it took the name of the Florentine kiss. "Warton quotes an old gentleman, who says, that when disposed to kiss his wife with unusual tenderness, he always gave her the Florentine kiss.—Chapman's Theocritus."
Όὐκ ἕραμ' Άλκίππας, ὃτι με πράν ὀυκ ἐφιλασεν
Τῶν ὤτων καθελοῖσ'."—Idyl. v. 135.
[19] διαυγεῖς. Another reading is,—καθάπερ βοὸς,—equivalent to the βoῶπις of Homer. Sappho uses the same comparison.
"But love first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain.
. . . . . .
It adds a precious seeing to the eye."—Shaks.
"Αλλὰ καμμὲν γλῶσσ' ἔαγ', ἄν δἐ λεπτὸν
Αὐτίκα χρῶ πῦρ ὺποδεδρόμακεν,
Όμμάτεσσιν δ' σὐδὲν ὄρημι, βομβεῦσιν δ' ακοαί μοι·
Καδ' δ' ἱδρὠς ψυχρὸς χεἐται τρόμος δὲ
Πᾶσαν αἱρεῖ· χρωροτέρη δὲ ποίας
Έμμί· τεθνᾶναι δ' ὀλίγου δἐοισα
Φαίνομαι ἄπνους."—Sappho.
[22] The reading in Courier's edition, μετά τυρίσκων τινῶν γενικῶν, has been here followed, instead of the common one, which yields no very clear sense—συρίγγων τινῶν γαμικῶν.