A kiss between ancient Romans. Statue of Cupid and Psyche
For the ancient Romans kissing it was an art to which they devoted themselves often and willingly, it seems with success.
In Rome there were different types of kiss and the differences depended above all on the nature of the recipient and the meaning it was intended to attribute.
The real love kisses were basia , that is, those exchanged between lovers or lovers; i wise they had a purely sensual nature being the kisses that were given to prostitutes; the osculum finally it was the kiss that was exchanged between relatives and should have had an affectionate value.
In this circumstance, however, the conditional is a must, since on this type of kiss " Roman style ” numerous "gossip" and amusing anecdotes have arisen; if the origin of the name is simple, the term os being the equivalent of our mouth , the use made of it is not as clear.
For some it indicated only a gesture of acknowledgment of kinship, but for others it had a rather ambiguous meaning and represented a valid excuse, for example, to make sure that a woman had not drunk wine.
Properzio (1st century BC) tells of a certain Cynthia who used the osculum to take the liberty of giving erotic kisses, otherwise forbidden, while the historian Suetonius attributes the same "vice" to Agrippina, infamous mother of Emperor Nero (Photo from:pauranka.it).