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: