To mark #BestFriendsDay, we focus on a pair of Greek heroes, whose friendship and loyalty were exemplary, but also got them into trouble on more than one occasion. Theseus was the quintessentially Athenian hero, while Peirithoos hailed from the region of Thessaly in Northern Greece. At Peirithoos's wedding a brawl erupted when some centaurs, stepbrothers of Peirithoos, had too much to drink and started to harass the women present. Theseus leapt to their defense, as we see him on a red-figure volute-krater of the mid-fifth century (07.286.84). Heroically nude, he swings an axe in the center of the chaotic scene on the neck. In return, Peirithoos helped Theseus repel the Amazons' invasion of Athens.⁣ But by the time they reached middle age, by now both widowed, the two friends were goading each other into misadventures. First, Theseus wanted to abduct Helen from her home in Sparta, though she was only a young girl, years away from being Helen of Troy, and Peirithoos went with him. The result was disastrous, as Helen's twin brothers, the Dioskouroi, invaded Attika and ravaged the land until they rescued her. As if to reciprocate, Theseus was persuaded to accompany Peirithoos in an even more hare-brained scheme, to descend to the Underworld and abduct Persephone. Needless to say, this too went awry, and the pair became trapped in Hades. On a red-figure calyx-krater with a panoramic scene of the Underworld (08.258.21), Theseus and Peirithoos sit glumly, chained to the Throne of Lethe (Forgetfulness), as Herakles, holding his club, stands to the right. Herakles was in Hades to fetch Kerberos, the last of his twelve labors, when he spotted the pair and was able to rescue Theseus, but Perithoos was condemned to pay for his foolishness forever.⁣ ⁣ #GreekRoman #TheMet #Theseus #Peirithoos #RedFigure #Hades #Herakles #PainterOfTheWoollySatyrs #NekyiaPainter #NationalBestFriendsDay2022 #Gemini #MythologicalFriendships #BFF