ABSTRACT
Theseus was accompanied on his later adventures (including his journey to the land of the Amazons in some accounts) by his friend PEIRITHOOS, who was a Lapith chieftain from northern Thessaly. Plutarch provides a rather facile story to explain how the pair came to form their partnership. To test whether Theseus was really as strong and brave as his reputation suggested, Peirithoos drove some of his cattle away from the plain of Marathon in northern Attica and turned to confront him when he arrived in pursuit. Each was so impressed by the courage and bearing of the other that they refrained from fighting, and Peirithoos reached his hand out to Theseus and declared that he was ready to submit to any penalty that he proposed; but Theseus asked to become his friend instead, and they spent much of their time together from that moment onward.149 When Peirithoos married the Lapith princess Hippodameia, Theseus visited him in his northern homeland to attend the wedding and fought at his side in the ensuing conflict between the Lapiths and the Centaurs (see further on p. 555); and the two friends went off together to take part in the hunt for the Calydonian boar and (in some accounts) the voyage of the Argonauts.150
But their most remarkable enterprise was the final one in which they set out to abduct the daughters of Zeus, including the queen of the Underworld, as new brides after the death of their wives.
