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,