Note 666 — BOOK XXXIII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF METALS.647
John Bostock translation
“Sacrum famæ.” This is the reading given by the Bamberg MS. in substitution for “aurum, sacra fames” and other readings of a similar nature, in which Pliny was thought by the commentators to allude to the famous lines of Virgil—
“Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, Auri sacra fames!”
Had he alluded to the passage of Virgil, it is not probable that he would have used the expression in the plural, “celeberrimi auctores.”