In this chapter the significance of philia (ritualised friendship) and xenia (‘guest-friendship’) for court society will be examined. It will be argued that gift-exchange was the principal mechanism underlying social relations at court. It will furthermore be argued that the bestowment of honorific titles and aulic offices on philoi was part of this same complex of conspicuous gift-exchange. The main thrust of the argument is that kings never had absolute power over their courts at their disposal, and that their control in the course of time even decreased; kings therefore constantly needed to develop new instruments of power to control their courts and thereby their kingdoms.

GUEST-FRIENDSHIP (XENIA) AND THE COURT

As we have seen, royal philoi had their origins in a wide range of Greek cities. They often came even from beyond the empires’ boundaries. An explanation of this perhaps remarkable fact has been offered by Gabriel Herman by expounding the interrelation of philia and xenia. According to Herman, the Greek tradition of xenia (or philoxenia) – a form of ritualised personal relationships with traits of fictive kinship, usually translated as ‘guest-friendship’ – constituted supranational, ‘horizontal’ elite networks linking men of approximately equal social status but of separate social units, i.e. poleis, thus uniting the Greek world at its highest level.