First of all then, said he, men must be stopped from foreknowing their deaths, for now they have knowledge beforehand. Prometheus has already been told to stop this foreknowledge. Next they must be stripped naked of all these things before trial, for they must be judged after death. And the judge must be naked too and dead, scanning with his soul itself the souls of all immediately after death, deprived of all his kinsmen and with all that fine attire of his left on earth, that his verdict may be just. Now I had realized all this before you, and I have appointed my three sons as judges two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and one, Aeacus, from Europe. And when these are dead, they will hold court in the meadow, at the crossroads from which two paths lead, one to the isles of the blessed, the other to Tartarus. And Rhadamanthus will judge those who come from Asia, Aeacus those from those from Europe, and to Minos I will grant the privileges of court appeal, if the other two are in doubt so that their judgement about which path men take may be as just as possible (Gorgias 523d - 524)
Two affirmations strike us in a particular way in the passage. In the first place it is emphasized that the supreme judgment is made by a soul without a body on a soul equally without a body; that is, in their purely spiritual aspect; and in the soul, Plato immediately after explains, "when it lacks the body, its constitutive characteristics and affections which man has received for it by means of his mode of living in different circumstances is quite visible": it is a judgment then that is conducted entirely within the sphere of the soul. The other affirmation pointed out is that Zeus establishes that his three sons will do the judging. Can anyone avoid the surprising analogy with the evangelical maxim: "The Father judges no one, but entrusts judgment to the Son." (John 5.22) The judgment, as we have stated, rewards the just ones (especially the philosophers, who do not waste their time in the vain pursuits of life, but who care only for human excellence (virtue) with a happy life on the Isle of the Blessed and punishments for evil-doers in Hades. [Giovanni Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle Translated by John R. Catan p. 146 - 147]
In other words, the idea that Jesus (or his earthly representative - the Pope, 'the judge of the ecumene') might have been naked sitting in judgment over the soul of the naked initiate finds a parallel in the description in Plato. My thanks to the Professor Giovanni Reale of Philosophy at Milan University for noticing this!
