Question 6. Wherefore do women salute their relations
with their mouth?
Solution. What if it should be (as many suppose) that
women were forbid to drink wine; therefore that those
that drank it might not be undiscovered, but convicted
when they met with their acquaintance, kissing became
a custom? Or is it for the reason which Aristotle the philosopher hath told us? Even that thing which was commonly reported and said to be done in many places, it
seems, was enterprised by the Trojan women in the confines of Italy. For after the men arrived and went ashore,
the women set the ships on fire, earnestly longing to be
discharged of their roving and seafaring condition; but
dreading their husbands' displeasure, they fell on saluting
their kindred and acquaintance that met them, by kissing
and embracing; whereupon the husbands' anger being
appeased and they reconciled, they used for the future this
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kind of compliment towards them. Or rather might this
usage be granted to women as a thing that gained them
reputation and interest, if they appeared hereby to have
many and good kindred and acquaintance? Or was it that,
it being unlawful to marry kinswomen, a courteous behavior
might proceed so far as a kiss, and this was retained only
as a significant sign of kindred and a note of a familiar
converse among them? For in former time they did not
marry women nigh by blood,— as now they marry not
aunts or sisters,—but of late they allowed the marrying
of cousins for the following reason. A certain man, mean
in estate, but on the other hand an honest and a popular
man among the citizens, designed to marry his cousin
being an heiress, and to get an estate by her. Upon this
account he was accused; but the people took little notice
of the accusation, and absolved him of the fault, enacting
by vote that it might be lawful for any man to marry so far
as cousins, but prohibited it to all higher degrees of consanguinity.
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