MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 31 



valour are recorded in the Persian annals, was em- 

 ployed as the fittest instrument for accomplishing 

 the task. This apostate and unprincipled Greek was 

 numbered among the friends of Hermias^ and con- 

 nected with him by the sacred ties of hospitality ; 

 but the breast of a renegade and traitor is alike in- 

 sensible to the feelings of honour and the obligations 

 of gratitude. His former intimacy was made the 

 means of facili tating the cruel stratagem. The unwary 

 prince was decoyed to an interview, where he was 

 seized by Mentor in person, and sent privately to 

 Upper Asia, until an order arrived from Artaxerxes 

 for his execution. The base artifices of the betrayer 

 ended not with this atrocity. Having possessed 

 himself of the ring which Hermias usually employed 

 as his signet, he sealed with it despatches to the dif- 

 ferent cities that acknowledged his authority ; and 

 by this false key their gates were opened without 

 suspicion to the Persian soldiers. The perfidy of 

 Mentor, which thus insidiously compassed the ruin 

 and death of his friend, Aristotle has himself branded 

 with deserved infamy, when, in one of his treatises, 

 he contrasts the dexterity of this successful knave 

 with the real virtue of prudence. His gratitude to 

 this generous benefactor he celebrated in verse, by 

 writing a hymn to his praise, and erecting a statue 

 to his memory, in the Temple at Delphi, which bore 

 an inscription, in allusion to the disreputable means 

 by which he was cut off. 



