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ἐν ταῖς τραγῳδίαις κτλ. Plato speaks as if he were bored to death by Palamedes' damnable iteration. Plays on the subject of Palamedes were written by all three dramatists (see the fragments of Aeschylus 180 ff., Sophocles 426 ff., Euripides 582 ff. Dindorf), and the invention of number or the like is ascribed to him by Aesch. l.c. Soph. Fr. 379 and Eur. l.c. Aeschylus also gives Prometheus the credit of the discovery (P. V. 459 f.). καίτοι κτλ. ‘Well, what d'ye think of Agamemnon for a general now?’ καίτοι (lit. ‘and yet’ sc. if this was true) is often thus used to introduce a question ‘cum quadam indignatione’ (real or, as here, feigned); for examples see Kugler de part. τοι ap. Pl. p. 18. ποῖόν τινα is derisive, as ποῖος constantly is: see on 1330 A. D. and V.'s translation “Yet what do you think of Agamemnon as a general?” misses the ἦθος of the original, which is correctly reproduced by Schneider and Jowett.
The Republic of Plato. James Adam. 1902. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
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