Sedeas in alto tu licet tribunali,
Et e curuli iura gentibus reddas:
Ascendet illa basiator atque illa:
Febricitantem basiabit et flentem:
Dabit oscitanti basium natantique,
Dabit et cacanti. Remedium mali solum est
Facias amicum, basiare quem nolis.
(To Bassus: Escape the kissers, no! it is not to be done, Bassus. They set upon you, wait for you, pursue you, meet you, here, there, and everywhere, in every street, at every corner. Neither acrid ulcer nor shiny pustules, neither disfigured chin nor foul scabs, nor lips anointed with pink salve, nor the drop at the tip of a frozen nose will save you. They kiss a man sweating with heat and starving with cold, nay! even a man keeping his lips pure for the nuptial kiss. A head muffled in hoods will not exempt you, nor a litter guarded with rug and curtain, nor the sedan kept closed most of the time get you off. The kisser will in by every chink. Not the very consulship, not the tribuneship, not the stern fasces and threatening rod of the shouting lictor will keep away the kisser. Though you sit exalted on the high tribunal, or give laws to the people from the curule seat, both to one and the other the kisser will climb up. He will kiss a man shaking with fever, and drivelling with cold. He will give a kiss to a man gaping, to a man swimming, even to a man shitting! The one and only cure for the plague is to make a real friend, whom you will not need to kiss).
Now we shall be in a position to explain to our satisfaction what Martial meant by basia lasciva (wanton kisses),—XI. 24.—basia maligna (pestilent kisses),—XII. 55.—and Petronius (ch. 23.) by his conspuere aliquem basio immundissimo (to beslobber anyone with a most filthy kiss); and we shall be in no way surprised at the fact that mentagra not only attacked the Roman nobles as a virtual epidemic, but that the velox transitus osculi (the swift transmission of a kiss) was alleged by Pliny as a reason of its communication.
Finally as to the historical factor in connection with mentagra,—it is implied in the account Pliny gives that it was only at Rome it was regarded as a new disease. It must have been already known to the Greeks, for they possessed the name Lichen for it. The Greek physicians, of whom several of the ones quoted by Galen lived some considerable time before Claudius, know nothing about the disease being a new one, while Galen himself says simply, ἐπικρατούσης ἐν τῇ πόλει τῆς μεντάγρας λεγομέμης, (when the mentagra as it was called was prevalent in the city). Plutarch again, though he (Symposiaca bk. VIII. Quaest. 9.) wrote a special Chapter on new diseases, with particular reference to Elephantiasis, never mentions mentagra at all. He represents it as having been introduced into Rome from Asia, and it was from Egypt, the Genetrix talium vitiorum (Mother-land of suchlike abominations), the Physicians[108] were imported who understood how to cure the disorder. We have more than once noted that Asia was the breeding place of sexual excesses, and described how vice spread from thence over different countries and how as a result of these practices the affections of the parts naturally concerned that arose first in Asia subsequently passed on to these same countries. For Rome this was in an especial degree the case with Egypt, where the undermining of morality had gone farthest; Martial[109] spoke justly when he said “Nequitias tellus scit dare nulla magis,” (No other land knows better how to produce finished rascality). But the intercourse with Asia and Egypt arose mainly in the time of Pompey, and became from that period ever more active, while concurrently luxury was on the increase and the old Virtus (manly virtue) of the Romans disappearing more and more every day,—above all when Tiberius by his own example elevated every form of vice into a sort of fancy article demanded by fashion.