Book IX, 1

A cruel viper struck the nursing udder of a doe which had newly calved as it hung down full of milk. Her fawn sucked the teat contaminated by poison, and from the fatal wound imbibed bitter milk charged with venom ill to cure. Death was transferred from mother to child, and at once by pitiless fate the breast bereft the young one of the gift of life that it owed to the womb.