Nulla tuum exemplum romanarum matronarum secuta est The legend of Lucretia as a possible source for the episode of the Lady of Paris (Pantagruel, XXI-XXII)

Since ancient times, Lucretia, a noble Roman woman raped by Sextus Tarquinius, was considered to be the ultimate model of female chastity, but from the Middle Ages onward the motives for her suicide were regularly called into question. This article retraces the issues of the lively debate on the virtue of this Roman woman and shows, through an intertextual analysis of chapters XXI and XXII of Pantagruel, the influence of different versions of the legend of Lucretia on the episode of the Lady of Paris.