There is no shortage of temples of virtue in sixteenth-century French poetry, and even if their authors never claim Virgil as their source, the dominant quest structure in these works nevertheless presents connections with the great epics of Antiquity, and in particular the Aeneid. It is difficult to determine the exact origin of this topos, of which Jean Lemaire de Belges' Le Temple d'Honneur et de Vertu seems to be one of the first French examples, but two ancient works emerge as rather obvious sources. In the Works and Days, Hesiod describes the arduous and barren path that one must follow in order to reach the summit of the Mountain of Virtue. Xenophon, too, presents Prodicus of Ceos' speech about Hercules at the crossroads between the paths of virtue and vice: this myth alternates between the discourses of Arete and Eudaimonia who attempt to conquer Hercules, who himself concludes predictably by rejecting vice and choosing virtue. Nevertheless, neither of these two authors mentions a temple of Virtue, so it is conceivable that Jean Lemaire de Belges combined this tradition with the tradition of the temple inherited from the Georgics, which is found in the writing of Froissart, or Chapelain, for example. Indeed, in Book 3 of the Georgics, Virgil erects a marble temple in honour of Augustus in a peaceful and pleasurable place, thus providing a model of encomiastic poetry:
Primus Idumeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas:
Et viridi in campo templum de marmore ponam,
Propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat
Mincius et tenera prætexit arundine ripas.
In medio mihi Cæsar erit, templumque tenebit.
(Georgics, 3:12–16)