As the ancient civilised nations were much more addicted than we are to
gesture language, it seems natural that so expressive a sign as kissing
should have been used for a variety of purposes—for indicating not only
family affection, sexual passion and friendship, but general respect,
reverence, humility, condescension, etc. Among idolatrous nations, as
M‘Clintock and Strong remark, “it was the custom to throw kisses towards
the images of the gods, and towards the sun and moon.” Kissing the hand
appears to be a modern custom, but many other parts of the body were
thus saluted by the ancients: “Kissing the feet of princes was a token
of subjection and obedience, which was sometimes carried so far that the
print of the foot received the kiss, so as to give the impression that
the very dust had become sacred by the royal tread, or that the subject
was not worthy to salute even the prince’s foot, but was content to kiss
the earth itself near or on which he trod.” A similar observance is the
kissing of the Pope’s toe, or rather, the cross on his slipper—a custom
in vogue since the year 710. Among the Arabs the women and children kiss
the beards of their husbands or fathers. Among the ancient Hebrews,
“kissing the lips by way of affectionate salutation was not only
permitted, but customary among near relatives of both sexes, both in
patriarchal and in later times.” The kiss on the cheek “has at all times
been customary in the East, and can hardly be said to be extinct even in
Europe.”
Among the ancient Greeks, Jealousy prompted the husbands to “make their
wives eat onions whenever they were going from home.” And in the Roman
Republic, “Among the safeguards of female purity,” says Mr. Lecky, “was
an enactment forbidding women even to taste wine.... Cato said that the
ancient Romans were accustomed to kiss their wives for the purpose of
discovering whether they had been drinking wine.”
Breath-sweetening cloves and cachous were evidently unknown in the good
old times.
The Romans had special names for three kinds of kisses—_basium_, a kiss
of politeness; _osculum_, between friends; _suavium_, between lovers. If
a man kissed his betrothed, she gained thereby the half of his effects
in the event of his dying before the celebration of the marriage; and if
the lady herself died, under the same circumstances, her heirs or
nearest of kin took the half due to her, a kiss among the ancients being
a sign of plighted faith. So seriously, indeed, was a kiss regarded by
the ancient Romans, that a husband would not even kiss his wife in
presence of his daughters.
It was on account of this strict feeling regarding kisses exchanged by
man and woman that the early Christians subjected themselves to fierce
attacks and slander, because of the kisses that were exchanged as a
symbol of religious union at the Love-Feasts of the first disciples.
“But, in 397, the Council of Carthage thought fit to forbid all
religious kissing between the sexes, notwithstanding St. Paul’s
exhortation, ‘Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity.’”