Note 14 — Chapter VII · IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE

This is obviously Attic invention. Plato certainly mentions Triptolemos in addition to Minos and the other judges. But it seems that to the Athenians Minos was unacceptable as a type of justice (he was, especially on the stage, the object of bitter attacks as an enemy of the country; see Plu., Thes. 16). and they tried to substitute their own Triptolemos for him in the triad of judges. Thus we find Triptolemos not beside Minos but in his place in a picture of the underworld on a vase from Altamura (Tript. Aiak. Rhad.), and in an analogous picture on an amphora at Karlsruhe (Aiak. Tript., the left side is broken off but prob. represented Rhadamanthys not Minos). Cf. Winkler, Darst. d. Unterwelt auf unterital. Vasen, p. 37. For the rest, nothing suggests that the three judges on these vase-pictures pass judgment on the deeds of men done in their lifetime: in strictness nothing is implied about their giving judgments. What is certain is simply that they, as types of justice, ἐπὶ ταῖσι τοῦ Πλούτωνος οἰκοῦσιν θύραις (like the Mystai in Ar., Ra. 163): they enjoy the rights of πάρεδοι of the divine pair, and hence they are seated on θρόνοι or δίφροι.