Judgement under Cronus
SocratesListen, then, as they say, to a very fine account, which you will regard as a tale, I imagine, but I as an account; for all that I am about to say, I will tell you as true. For, as Homer says, Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided the rule among themselves after they took it over from their father. Now in the time of Cronus there was this law concerning human beings, and it has always been, and still is now, among the gods: that the one among human beings who has gone through his life justly and piously should, when he dies, go away to the Isles of the Blessed and dwell there in all happiness, free from evils, but the one who has lived unjustly and godlessly should go to the prison of retribution and penalty, which they call Tartarus.
The judges of these people, in the time of Cronus and still when Zeus had newly taken the rule, were living men judging the living, and they gave judgement on the very day on which those people were to die; so the cases were badly judged. Pluto, then, and the overseers from the Isles of the Blessed came and told Zeus that people who did not deserve it were coming to them at both places.