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[329b] complain of the indignities that friends and kinsmen put upon old age and thereto recite a doleful litany1 of all the miseries for which they blame old age. But in my opinion, Socrates, they do not put the blame on the real cause.2 For if it were the cause I too should have had the same experience so far as old age is concerned, and so would all others who have come to this time of life. But in fact I have ere now met with others who do not feel in this way, and in particular I remember hearing Sophocles the poet greeted by a fellow who asked,

1 For such a litany cf. Sophocles O.C. 1235.

2 This suggests Aristotle's fallacy of the false cause, Soph. El. 167 b 21. Cf. Philebus 28 A and Isocrates xv. 230.

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