Thais of Athens (Russian: "Таис Афинская") is a Historical Fiction novel written by the Soviet paleontologist and SF writer Ivan Yefremov and set around the time of Alexander the Great's conquests. The eponymous heroine Thaïs is a famous Athenian hetaera, whom history remembers for burning the Achaemenid Persia's capital to the ground and later reigning as queen of Ptolemaic Egypt. The novel takes these facts and fills in the gaps and gray areas between and around them with invented characters and events that Thais encounters in her journey across the Ecumene. The result is both a compelling story and an epic panorama of life in the Hellenistic world during the late fourth century BCE.