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.