present: this power which they have Prometheus has already received my
orders to take from them: in the second place, they shall be entirely
stripped before they are judged, for they shall be judged when they are
dead; and the judge too shall be naked, that is to say, dead—he with
his naked soul shall pierce into the other naked souls; and they shall
die suddenly and be deprived of all their kindred, and leave their
brave attire strewn upon the earth—conducted in this manner, the
judgment will be just. I knew all about the matter before any of you,
and therefore I have made my sons judges; two from Asia, Minos and
Rhadamanthus, and one from Europe, Aeacus. And these, when they are
dead, shall give judgment in the meadow at the parting of the ways,
whence the two roads lead, one to the Islands of the Blessed, and the
other to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus shall judge those who come from Asia,
and Aeacus those who come from Europe. And to Minos I shall give the
primacy, and he shall hold a court of appeal, in case either of the two
others are in any doubt:—then the judgment respecting the last journey
of men will be as just as possible.”
From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, I draw the
following inferences:—Death, if I am right, is in the first place the
separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else.
And after they are separated they retain their several natures, as in
life; the body keeps the same habit, and the results of treatment or
accident are distinctly visible in it: for example, he who by nature or
training or both, was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he
was, after he is dead; and the fat man will remain fat; and so on; and
the dead man, who in life had a fancy to have flowing hair, will have
flowing hair. And if he was marked with the whip and had the prints of
the scourge, or of wounds in him when he was alive, you might see the
same in the dead body; and if his limbs were broken or misshapen when
he was alive, the same appearance would be visible in the dead. And in
a word, whatever was the habit of the body during life would be
distinguishable after death, either perfectly, or in a great measure
and for a certain time. And I should imagine that this is equally true
of the soul, Callicles; when a man is stripped of the body, all the
natural or acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view.—And
when they come to the judge, as those from Asia come to Rhadamanthus,
he places them near him and inspects them quite impartially, not
knowing whose the soul is: perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the
great king, or of some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in
him, but his soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints
and scars of perjuries and crimes with which each action has stained
him, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture, and has no
straightness, because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus