We have seen the parallelism between the Roman conception of cor, praecordia, etc., and the Greek conception of κῆρ, ϕρένες, etc. For both peoples the seat of consciousness was in the chest. What was the Roman view of the head, caput, whose importance appears so strikingly in legal and other phrases? It has been generally recognised—indeed is obvious—that it was used as loosely equivalent to ‘life’. Why has not been explained. The figure pars pro toto and the fatal results of decapitation have perhaps sufficed. I suggest, what does not appear to have been suspected, that it was thought to contain the seed, the very stuff of life, and the life-soul associated with it. This seems to be the explanation of the early phrase, caput limare cum aliqua (or aliquo), ‘to diminish (lit. “file away”, cf. molere, terere) one's head with someone’, which has been taken to mean ‘to kiss’. One might speak of ‘snatching kisses from’ someone but it would be strange to speak of kissing as ‘filing away one's head’ with the help of somebody. It is not a jest but an indirect way of referring to some quite important act. Thus a character in a tragedy of Livius Andronicus says: ‘Believe it that she never with my will diminished her head with him’.