Another in a series of stories for liberal religious kids.
The great philosopher Socrates, who lived two thousand five hundred years ago, once had a long conversation with another philosopher named Gorgias. And during that long conversation, he told a story about what happens to human beings after we die.
Listen, then (said Socrates), as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale, which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only. But I believe this is a true tale, for I mean to speak the truth.
The poet Homer tells us in his immortal poem The Iliad, how the gods Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided the empire which they inherited from their father. Poseidon ruled the oceans, Hades ruled the underworld, while Zeus ruled over everything, including over the other gods and goddesses.
Now in the days of Cronos there had existed a law about what happens to human beings after we die. This law has been in force since the beginning and remains so today. The law decrees that human beings who have lived their whole lives in justice and holiness shall go, after they die, to the Islands of the Blessed, where they will dwell in perfect happiness. On the other hand, human beings who have lived unjust and irreverent lives have to go to Tartaros, the house of vengeance and punishment.
In the time of Cronos, and even into the early days of Zeus’s reign, the judgement was given on the very day on which people were to die — the judges were alive, and the people were alive — and the consequence was that the judgements were not well given. So Hades and the authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus, and said that some of the people who had died had found their way to the wrong places.
“Well, first of all,” Zeus said, “we must put a stop to human beings knowing the time of their death; for this they at present do know. However, Prometheus, the god of foresight, has already been given the word to stop this in them.
“Next,” said Zeus, “human beings must be stripped of their clothing and indeed of their very bodies, and stripped of everything else before they are judged. In other words, the human beings must be fully dead when they are judged, and not alive as they currently are. Furthermore, whoever judges them also must be dead and covered over with no clothing nor a body, nor with their wealth and families or other fine array. In this way, the judge’s naked soul will be able to perceive the truth of the other naked souls. If the judgment is carried out in this way, then it will be just.”
Zeus then decreed that three of his own human children should become judges, once they died. These three were Minos and Rhadamanthus from Asia, and Aeacus from Europe. When they died, they were assigned to stay in the “meadow at the parting of the ways.” Two roads left this meadow: one road went to the Islands of the Blessed, and the other road went to Tartaros. Rhadamanthus judged all the humans who died in Asia. Aeacus judged all the humans who died in Europe. And Minos served as the final court of appeal, if either of the others had any doubt about a human being who came before them.
Brief commentary
[A couple of points you might want to mention if you talk about this story with actual children:] This “fable” was written nearly half a millennium before the Christian era. And it’s worth remembering that Socrates spoke a different language from us, and his word for truth — aletheia — meant something more like “revealing” or “disclosing.” Aletheia was not the opposite of falsehood, but rather the opposite of forgetfulness. Aletheia was also a goddess.
Source:
Plato, Gorgias 523a – 524a, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1871), with reference to the translation by W. R. M. Lamb (1925).