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In Greek mythology, Pirithous (also transliterated as Perithoos or Peirithoos or Peirithous) was the King of the Lapiths and husband of Hippodamia. He was either a son of Dia and Ixion or of Dia and Zeus. His best friend was Theseus. In Iliad I, Nestor numbers Pirithous and Theseus "of heroic fame" among an earlier generation of heroes of his youth, "the strongest men that Earth has bred, the strongest men against the strongest enemies, a savage mountain-dwelling tribe whom they utterly destroyed." No trace of such an oral tradition, which Homer's listeners would have recognized in Nestor's allusion, survived in literary epic.