Later Life
Thaïs's subsequent career is uncertain. According to Athenaeus, she married her lover Ptolemy, who became king of Egypt, after Alexander's death. Even if they were not actually married, their relationship seems to have acquired "quasi-legal status". She gave Ptolemy three children, two boys and a girl: Lagus, Leontiscus, and Eirene.
Whatever the legal status of their relationship, Thaïs was never portrayed as Ptolemy's queen, nor were her children treated as heirs to his throne. Ptolemy had other wives, first Eurydice of Egypt, and later Berenice I of Egypt, who became his principal consort and mother of his heir.
Thaïs's daughter Eirene married Eunostos, king of Soli, Cyprus. Lagus is known from a reference to his victory in a chariot race in the Lycaea, an Arcadian festival, in 308/307. Leontiscus appears to have been in Cyprus with his sister, as he recorded there as a prisoner taken by Demetrius Poliorcetes in 307 or 306 after his invasion of the island. He was later sent home to Ptolemy.
The date of Thaïs's death is unknown.
Read more about this topic: Thaïs
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)