Thaïs

Thaïs was an Athenian hetaira who accompanied Alexander the Great's campaign and is said to have proposed the burning of Persepolis. The hetairai were courtesans of a distinct class in the Greek world — educated, able to move in male company at symposia, and often financially independent — and she is described as a companion of Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals. The episode that made her famous is dated to 330 BC. Alexander had taken Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid empire, and its palaces were intact. At a drinking party Thaïs is reported to have argued that it would be a fine thing if the palace of Xerxes were burned by the hands of a woman, in revenge for the burning of the Athenian Acropolis in 480 BC, and to have thrown the first torch, with Alexander following her. The account comes from Cleitarchus and reaches us through Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch and Curtius Rufus. Arrian, generally the more sober source, presents the burning as a deliberate policy decision taken soberly, to signal the end of the Persian war. Archaeology confirms an intense fire; it does not settle the reason. Modern historians tend to prefer Arrian, and note that a drunken woman makes a more satisfying story than a calculated act of state terror. She later lived with Ptolemy, who became ruler of Egypt, and bore him three children — Leontiscus, Lagus and a daughter, Eirene, who married the king of Cyprus. The story was taken up by Dryden in Alexander's Feast, by Handel, and by the novel and opera Thaïs, which conflate her with a different Egyptian saint.

• Nationality: Greek
• Roles: companion, courtesan