Thais of Athens (Greek: Θαΐς; fl. 4th century BCE) was an Athenian hetaira (high-status courtesan) who accompanied Alexander the Great on his military campaigns into Asia and later became the wife of Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander's generals and the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. She is most famous in ancient historiography for allegedly instigating the burning of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, in 330 BCE.
Historical Role
Burning of Persepolis
According to accounts by the ancient historians Diodorus Siculus (Library of History, XVII.72) and Plutarch (Life of Alexander, 38), during a drunken symposium following the conquest of Persepolis, Thaïs delivered a speech urging Alexander to set fire to the palace of Xerxes as retribution for the Persian king's destruction of the Athenian Acropolis in 480 BCE during the second Persian invasion of Greece. She is described as leading a Dionysiac procession of female musicians and throwing the first blazing torch into the palace after Alexander. The fire rapidly consumed the complex.
The historicity of this account is debated. The historian Arrian, drawing on the eyewitness accounts of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, attributes the destruction to Alexander's deliberate policy of retribution and does not mention Thaïs or a drunken revel. Some modern scholars consider the Thaïs anecdote a later embellishment from the "Vulgate" tradition derived from the historian Cleitarchus, who wrote around 300 BCE and is known for dramatic narratives.
Relationship with Ptolemy I Soter
At the time of the Persepolis episode, Thaïs is identified as the lover of Ptolemy, one of Alexander's closest companions and bodyguards. After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, she married Ptolemy, who became satrap of Egypt and later declared himself king (Ptolemy I Soter). According to the Greek writer Athenaeus (Deipnosophists, XIII.576e), she bore Ptolemy three children: two sons, Lagus and Leontiscus, and a daughter, Eirene, who married Eunostos, king of Soloi in Cyprus. The date of Thaïs's death is unknown.
In Literature and Art
Thaïs has been a recurring figure in Western literature and art. She appears in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy (Inferno, XVIII.133–136) in the circle of the flatterers, though this depiction is based on a character from Terence's play Eunuchus rather than directly on the historical figure. She is the subject of John Dryden's poem Alexander's Feast (1697), later set to music by George Frideric Handel. In the 20th century, the Russian author Ivan Efremov wrote a historical novel titled Thaïs of Athens (1972), which chronicles her life from her meeting with Alexander through her time in Egypt. She also appears as a supporting character in Mary Renault's novels Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy.
