Perhaps hell is for the self-conscious
Hesiod corrects that saying of Plato’s, that the punishment follows hard upon the sin. He says it is born at the same instant, with the sin itself; to expect punishment is to suffer it: to merit it is to expect it. Wickedness forges torments for itself: "Who counsels evil, suffers evil most," just as the wasp harms others when it stings but especially itself, for it loses sting and strength for ever: "In that wound they lay down their lives." The Spanish blister-fly secretes an antidote to its poison, by some mutual antipathy within nature. So too, just when we take pleasure in vice, there is born in our conscience an opposite displeasure, which tortures us, sleeping and waking, with many painful thoughts. "Many indeed, often talking in their sleep or delirious in illness, have proclaimed, it is said, and betrayed long-hidden sins. [...] No hiding-place awaits the wicked, said Epicurus, for they can never be certain of hiding there while their conscience gives them away. ["This is the principal vengeance: no guilty man is absolved: he is his own judge."]"
This all assumes that only the wicked, evil, and sinful can feel guilt. If "to expect punishment is to suffer it," then what about the innocent boy who commits a minor transgression but then is needless anxious over punishment? I say this because I was a self-punishing child. If I did something slightly devious from norms and expectations, I'd get very down over it, and pronounce my own punishments to my parents. I'd have to be unpunished.
And what about a sociopath who can steal cars, break traffic laws, get arrested and feel no remorse? Those are just silly rules. It's only jail for a few days, and jail's not so bad anyway (based on a true character). If he accepts institutional detainment without sting, then will his future self be tormented? He may feel less torment than me, who yesterday hesitated to kill a pair of ants, and in my uncertainty decided to let one of them live.
I'm coming to a weird conclusion here: hell is for the self-conscious. Future suffering is less about the rating of a virtue along some objective good vs. evil spectrum, and more about the nature of a rumination. In the act of being honest, in reviewing your life and assaying your slightest deeds, you're bound to find ways you could have acted better. Even if you're level-headed and non-regretful about it, you'll feel more weight than the menace with no capacity to reflect. And so, unfortunately, a virtuous person can suffer more by being more virtuous.
This isn't fair, but it feels true. Maybe you believe that the self-conscious repents in this life while the sinner repents in the eternities of hell, but that really depends on your conception of how the afterlife works.
Last night I had three consecutive dreams, each brooding with a supernatural evil that brought me the chills when I woke up. Throughout the morning, I wondered what the trigger might have been. Yesterday was a happy day: the weather was nice, I went to a Memorial Day BBQ, went swimming for the first time all season, introduced my daughter to extended family, and, oh yeah, I read a chapter by Montaigne on the nature of evil and punishment. Even reading and contemplating about it in the abstract is enough to load them into your subconscious and bloom into your dreams.