Thais

Athenian hetaira who accompanied the Macedonian court into Asia, mistress (later wife) of Ptolemy son of Lagus — to whom she bore three children, two boys Leontiscus and Lagus and a daughter Eirene who married the Cypriot king Eunostus of Soli (Athenaeus *Deipnosophistae* 13.576e). At the banquet of victory at Persepolis in January 330 BC, Plutarch *Alex.* 38 and Diodorus 17.72 preserve the tradition that she, drunk, proposed a komos-procession through the palace of the Persian kings ending in its destruction by fire as revenge for Xerxes's burning of the Acropolis — and that Alexander, equally drunk, seized a torch and led the procession himself. Arrian *Anab.* 3.18 preserves a rival version in which the burning of the Apadana was a deliberate policy decision taken against Parmenion's advice. The archaeological evidence confirms only that the Apadana was intensely burned in situ; the drunken-komos story is probably Cleitarchus's dramatisation.

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