This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the genesis of Hellenistic courts in the reigns of Philip and Alexander. Thereafter, the philoi tou basileōs, ‘the friends of the king’, will be discussed. Who were these courtiers? What were their (ethnic) origins, how were they attracted to court and what was their relationship with the royal family? After a general introduction of the philoi as a sociopolitical group, special attention will be given to them as a political factor in the Hellenistic empires. It will argued that in the Hellenistic world the court hardly served as the ‘golden cage’ hypothesised by Norbert Elias, that is, an instrument of power to suppress aristocratic resistance to absolutism and centralisation. When employed as an instrument of power to the king's own benefit, the Hellenistic court could in rare circumstances facilitate the creation of a new elite connected with the court – e.g. the creation of the first philoi societies in the decades after Alexander's death, or the transformation of the Seleukid empire from a centralised system of direct rule to a decentralised system of indirect rule through local vassal dynasties in the reign of Antiochos III – rather than a means to pacify unruly existing noble households with strong provincial power bases by forcing them to stay at the centre.