This chapter examines the accounts of friendship (philia) in the early philosophical literature and argues that there is a coherent narrative of philosophical theorizing of friendship prior to Aristotle, which does not make Presocratics and Socratics mere pre-Aristotelian. The main treatments of friendship (in Empedocles, Democritus, the Sophists, and the Socratics) considered in this chapter can be understood as efforts to provide a convincing explanation of what motivates the relation of philia and isolate the conditions for, and key features of this specific form of relation essential to the good life.