Thais

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In the Commedia the name of Thais appears only once, at verse 133 of Canto XVIII of the Inferno, where a sinner, speaking to Virgil who questions him, recalls having been "Taïde, the whore who answered / her lover when he said to me: 'Have you any?'" The note to the verse clarifies that she is a character from a comedy by Terence, the Eunuchus, and that the two lines of dialogue reported by Dante are not exchanged between those two interlocutors, as Dante's citation might lead one to think. The sinner who pronounces the name is placed in the circle of the seducers and flatterers, as shown by the preceding verses, which describe a sinner "filthy and disheveled" intent on scratching herself and moving in a disordered way; the note to verse 130 specifies that the term "fante" indicates a woman of modest condition, and that "meretrice" (prostitute) is said precisely at verse 133 with the parenthetical "the whore." Dante provides no other biographical data on Thais: her presence is limited to this indirect citation, inserted by the sinner as an example of his own sins as a flatterer.