Seps (legendary creature)

{{Short description|Mythological snake}}

{{For|similar terms|Tetradactylus|SEPS}}

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A seps is a legendary snake from medieval bestiaries. They were said to have extremely corrosive venom that liquefied their prey.{{cite web|url=http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast270.htm|title=Seps|accessdate=2008-12-28|work=The Medieval Bestiary|date=2011-01-15|author=Badke, David}}

Lucan's Pharsalia refers to its appearance and the effects of its poison.

{{poemquote

|text=... Clinging to his skin

A Seps with curving tooth, of little size,

He seized and tore away, and to the sands

Pierced with his javelin. Small the serpent's bulk;

None deals a death more horrible in form.

For swift the flesh dissolving round the wound

Bared the pale bone; swam all his limbs in blood;

Wasted the tissue of his calves and knees:

And all the muscles of his thighs were thawed

In black distilment, and file membrane sheath

Parted, that bound his vitals, which abroad

Flowed upon earth: yet seemed it not that all

His frame was loosed, for by the venomous drop

Were all the bands that held his muscles drawn

Down to a juice; the framework of his chest

Was bare, its cavity, and all the parts

Hid by the organs of life, that make the man.Tennant, Roy (date unknown). Lucan's Pharsalia Book 9 ll. 896-913 (line numbers in the original Latin). Retrieved from http://mcllibrary.org/Pharsalia/book9.html.}}

Shelley in Prometheus Unbound writes:

{{Poemquote

|text=...all my being,

Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw

Into a dew with poison, is dissolved...Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1820), Prometheus Unbound, Act III, scene 1.}}

Similarly, the seps is described as "a small snake which consumes with its poison not just the body but the bones" in the medieval Aberdeen Bestiary.Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 69v.