Lucan [1st century CE] (Pharsalia, book 9, verse 850-879): But on Sabellus' yet more piteous death / Their eyes were fastened. For a puny seps / With curving tooth was clinging to his shin : \ He tore it forth and fixed it to the sands, / Pierced with his javelin. Small the serpent's bulk ; None shall more surely deal a stroke of death. / For swift the flesh dissolving round the wound / Bared the pale bone ; swam all his limbs in blood ; / His calves and knees were wasted and his thighs / Were thawed in black distilment, and the sheath / Parted, that bound his vitals, which abroad / Flowed upon earth : yet not his solid frame / Was all spread forth, for by the venom 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. / So by unholy death there stood revealed / His inmost nature. Head and stalwart arms, / And neck and shoulders, from their solid mass / Melt in corruption. Not more swiftly flows / Wax at the sun's command, nor snow compelled / By southern breezes. Yet not all is said: / For so to noxious humors fire consumes / Our fleshly frame ; but on the funeral pyre / What bones have perished ? These dissolve no less / Than did the mouldered tissues, nor of death / Thus swift is left a trace. Of Afric pests / Thou bear'st the palm for hurtfulness : the life / They snatch, thou only with the life the clay. - [Ridley, 1919, Volume 2, Page 241-243]

Aelianus [170-230 CE] (On the Characteristics of Animals, Book 16, 40): There is a snake called the Seps and it has this remarkable quality: it changes the color of its body so as to match the places through which it passes. The four fangs of its lower jaw are hollow, and membrane-like veils cover them and conceal the hollows. Directly the creature has struck, it projects its poison through these ducts, which at once makes a festering wound and very soon causes death. - [Scholfield translation]

Gaius Julius Solinus [3rd century CE] (De mirabilibus mundi / Polyhistor, Chapter 27.33): The sting of the seps is followed by putrefaction. - [Arwen Apps translation, 2011]

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 4:17): The seps is a small snake that consumes not only the body but also the bones with its venom. - [Barney, Lewis, et. al. translation]

Gerald of Wales [c. 1146 – c. 1223] (Topographia Hibernica, Distinction 1, 26): [The oriental land] is infested by the seps, a little reptile whose malignity makes up for its diminutive size. Its venom not only wastes the flesh, but the very bones. - [Forester translation, 1863]

Thomas of Cantimpré [circa 1200-1272 CE] (Liber de natura rerum, Serpents 8.37): A serps [seps], as Solinus says, is a serpent small in body, but enormous and evil in its malice. If it strikes someone, it consumes the flesh and the bones at the same time with its poison, as if the victim were seized by voracious flames. - [Badke translation/paraphrase]

Bartholomaeus Anglicus [13th century CE] (Liber de proprietatibus rerum, Book18.10): Also Ceps is an adder that slayeth and maketh a man madde, and when he hath bitten a man, anone he destroyeth and wasteth him: so that by the Serpents mouth, the man melteth altogether: and this Serpent destroieth and renteth not onely the bodye, but also he destroyeth with venim and wasteth both bones and sinewes of him, the Poet sheweth in this manner. Ossaque dissoluens cum corpore tabificus Seps. Ceps slaieth, undoeth, & destroyeth both body & bones... - [Batman]