A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.  We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind.  You may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain:  but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak; so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness.  For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be as it were companions and almost equals to themselves; which many times sorteth to inconvenience.  The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favorites, or privadoes; as if it were matter of grace or conversation.  But the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them “participes curarum”; for it is that which tieth the knot.  And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is received between private men.

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the Great) to that height that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla’s overmatch.  For when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his against the pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet; “for that more men adored the sun rising than the sun setting.”  With Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after his nephew; and this was the man that had power with him to draw him forth to his death.  For when Caesar would have discharged the Senate in regard of some ill presages, and specially a dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the Senate till his wife had dreamt a better dream.  And it seemeth his favor was so great as Antonius, in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of Cicero’s Philippics, calleth him “venefica”—­“witch”; as if he had enchanted Caesar.  Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to that height as, when he consulted with Maecenas about the marriage