that such murders are almost always produced by wounds in the neck or mutilation of the abdomen, never by wounds of the head.
Paul d’Enjoy defines the kiss as “a bite and a suction,”[84] and a high authority says: “The impulse to bite is also a part of the tactile element which lies at the origin of kissing.”[85] The tactile kiss which doubtless is very primitive has developed into the olfactory and gustatory, extending thence into many elaborations and variants. Under the stress of strong sexual emotion when love is closely knit with pain there is often an overwhelming tendency to bite the partner of the act, and the love-bite is often referred to in Latin literature. Thus Plautus, Pseudolus, I, 1, ll. 62–66, speaks of amorous dalliance:
Nunc nostri amores, mores, consuetudines,
Iocus, ludus, sermo, suauis suauiatio
Compressiones arctae amantum comparum,
Tencris labellis molles morsiunculae,
Papillarum horridularum oppressiunculae.
And Catullus, VIII, 17, 18, writes after a quarrel:
Quem nunc amabis? cuius esse diceris?
Quem basiabis? cui labella mordebis?
In a well-known Ode, Horace Carmin I, xiii, 11, 12:
siue puer furens
impressit memorem dente labris notam.
which Francis Englishes:
I burn, when in excess of wine
He soils those snowy arms of thine,
Or on thy lips the fierce-fond boy
Marks with his teeth the furious joy.
Tibullus, I, vi, 14, 15, writes:
Tunc succos herbasque dedi, queis liuor abiret,
Quem facit impresso mutua dente Uenus.
And again, I, viii, 35–38:
At Uenus inueniet puero succumbere furtim,
Dum tumet, et teneros conserit usque sinus.
Et dare anhelanti pugnantibus humida linguis
Oscula, et in collo figere dente notas.
But fav’ring Venus watchful o’er thy joy,
Shall lay thee secret near th’ impassion’d boy;
