 Lefèvre therefore went beyond a mere ad fontes search for the “pure Aristotle”. As with other disciplines, his moral philosophy presented Aristotle as the authority because he was most useful to Christians. His notae to the Ethics are filled with exempla carefully selected from the Roman poets, especially Horace, Virgil, and Ovid. The virtues of the gentiles regularly presage Christian morality, according to Lefèvre. So, for instance, the Pythagorean and Roman ideals of chaste virginity are helpful for urging temperance. To illustrate the excellence of ancient morals, Lefèvre quoted Ovid’s Metamorphoses 15.367–36, where the waters of the river Clitorius caused men to flee from wine. Ovid evoked this image in his discussion of the Pythagorean way of life, leading Lefèvre to reflect on Dama, the virgin daughter of Pythagoras, as well as the chaste self-sacrifice of Lucretia and the heroic Spartan virgins who killed themselves after being raped. Observing that the value of virginity is “not foreign” to Christians, who know the Virgin birth, Lefèvre went on to contrast this with the image of intemperance and false virginity of the harpies in Virgil, Aeneid 3.214–218 (see notae on NE III.10, in 1497: d7v). At times Lefèvre even uses such notae to reframe Aristotle entirely. He reorients the discussion in the last book of the Ethics, where Aristotle begins with the question of whether pleasure is the supreme ethical goal, by recalling the New Testament image of Jesus Christ rebuking the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. Living a good or “true life”, Lefèvre asserts, is primarily about uniting word and deed, for