MEMOIR OE 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 Herraias, 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 facilitating 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 whicli 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 bynm 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. 
