Named for the famous Athenian hetaera who accompanied Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.) in Asia. She later joined king Ptolemy I, from whom she had three children. Thaïs also is the title figure of a novel (1890) of the French novelist and satirist and 1921 Nobel laureate Anatole France (1844–1924, pseudonym of Jacques Anatole François Thibault). (N. Solovaya; A. Paluzíe-Borrell) _ _.