“I love not wine; but thou hast power T’ intoxicate at any hour. Touch first the cup with thine own lip, Then hand it round for mine to sip, And temperance at once gives way; My sweet cup-bearer wins the day. That cup’s a boat which ferries over Thy kiss in safety to thy lover, And tells by its delicious flavor Plow much it revels in thy favor.” * * * * * Longepierre, to give an idea of the luxurious estimation in which garlands were held by the ancients, relates an anecdote of a frail beauty, who, in order to gratify three lovers without leaving cause for jealousy with any of them, gave a kiss to one, let the other drink after her, and put a garland on the brow of the third; so that each was satisfied with his favor, and flattered himself with the preference. * * * * * In one of Anacreon’s odes we find the strong and beautiful phrase, “a lip provoking kisses.” “Then her lip, so rich in blisses, Sweet petitioner for kisses.” Tatius speaks of “lips soft and delicate for kissing;” and that grave old commentator, Lambinus, in his notes upon Lucretius, tells us, with all the authority of experience, that girls who have large lips kiss infinitely sweeter than others! * * * * * Æneas Sylvius, in his story of the loves of Euryalus and Lucretia, where he particularizes the beauties of the heroine, describes her lips as exquisitely adapted for biting.[3] And Catullus, in his poems (viii.), asks, “Whom will you love now? Whose will you be called? Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite? But you, Catullus, be stubbornly obdurate.” As Lamb has it: “Whose fondling care shalt thou avow? Whose kisses now shalt thou return? Whose lip in rapture bite? But thou, Hold, hold, Catullus, cold and stern.” Or, as Elton renders it: “Whom wilt thou for thy lover choose? Whose shall they call thee, false one, whose? Who shall thy darted kisses sip, While thy keen love-bites scar his lip? But thou, Catullus, scorn to feel: Persist—and let thy heart be steel.” Plautus alludes to this biting;[4] and Horace says (Ode XIII.), as already quoted: “Or on thy lips the fierce fond boy Marks with his teeth the furious joy.” Plutarch tells us that Flora, the mistress of Cn. Pompey, used to say, in commendation of her lover, that she could never quit his arms without giving him a bite. And Tibullus, in his confession of his illicit love for Delia, the wife of another, and of his devices for covering his tracks, says, among other things, “I gave her juices and herbs for removing the livid marks which mutual Venus makes by the impress of the teeth.” * * * * * Anacreon finds in the brevity of life arguments for the voluptuary as well as for the moralist: