It was the common practice with the Hebrews for acquaintances, when they met, to kiss each other on the head, hands, and shoulders; and it was assuredly with a kiss of pretended friendship that Judas betrayed his Master.
Even the Greeks in former times used kissing as a common salutation; not only friends and acquaintances kissed each other, but also persons who quite accidentally met when they were travelling.
The custom of kissing, however, became less general later on. In a discourse of Dion Chrysostomus, called From Eubœa, or “The Hunter,” is a story of a rustic coming to the city and meeting two acquaintances in the assembly, whom he goes up to and kisses. “But,” says the rustic, “people laughed prodigiously at my kissing them, and, on that occasion, I learnt that it is not customary for people of the city to kiss each other.”[22]
Kissing seems to have been much more in vogue with the Romans, amongst whom it was the usual custom for people to salute each other with a kiss on the hand, the cheek, or the mouth. Many even scented their mouths in order to render their kisses more pleasing—or less unpleasant. Martial laments over this usage in a little epigram to Posthumus:
What’s this that myrrh doth still smell in thy kiss,
And that with thee no other odour is?
’Tis doubt, my Posthumus, he that doth smell
So sweetly always, smells not very well.
This kissing of friends gradually became a veritable nuisance to the country. Fashion ordained that every one should give and receive such kisses, but, in reality, every one preferred evading them. Martial, in another epigram to this same Posthumus, exclaims:
Posthumus late was wont to kiss
With one lip, which I loth;
But now my plague redoubled is,—
He kisses me with both.
and
Posthumus’ kisses some must have,
And some salute his fist;
Thy hand, good Posthumus, I crave,
If I may choose my list.
Under such frightful circumstances people had recourse to shifts which seem almost as unsavoury as the kisses they would escape: