But they had strong and clear ideas, for all that, of right and wrong, of justice and so on. If they believed {143} at all in a life after death it was of a life so shadowy, and their idea of it was so vague, that it certainly made no difference to their life on earth. The Egyptians were very careful in preserving their dead, in the form of mummies. The Greeks did not treat their dead with quite so much respect. They often burned the bodies, so they had no occasion for immense tombs. A small vase would contain the ashes. [Sidenote: Life of Greek cities] It is interesting to try to imagine the way of life of these people in their city states. We may suppose them to have been a people of very busy active minds, always ready to discuss any new thing, whether it were in art, in philosophy, or science. We may imagine endless discussions going on under the porticoes which gave them shelter from the hot sun. "Stoa," these porticoes or colonnades were called in Greek, and it is from the people disputing there that we get the name of the "Stoic" philosophers. Opposed to them in dispute would be the "Epicureans," or disciples of Epicurus. These would be disputing, and pupils listening to them, imbibing lessons in oratory and philosophy, and then out in the street might perhaps pass some important person like Pericles, the great statesman, or Alcibiades, or Nicias, the admiral. Any of these would be followed by a great retinue of friends and hangers-on and slaves. In another part of the city there would be busy shops. Most of the Grecian cities were on the coast; and there would be the port and ships coming and going. Then there would be the gymnasia, where the athletes could be watched, doing exercises, playing games, throwing the javelin or the discus, wrestling, and so on. Some half of the population of the city would {144} probably be slaves, slaves taken in war or by purchase from their parents in Thrace or other barbarous lands. There was a great slave market in Athens itself, and the sea-faring traders and pirates of whom we have spoken did a little slave-trading among their other business. Probably it was seldom that the slaves were badly treated, and we know that they often were set free and often had quite a good time even while they were slaves. The name "slave" really comes from Slav. It is taken from the name of the Slavonic people, because it was from them that most of the slaves were taken. It is not derived from that Latin word "servus," which is translated "slave," and from which our "serf"--the serfs of the Anglo-Saxons--is taken. A slave might rise to quite high employment, and it is curious to think that the large police force in Athens was at one time composed of more than a thousand slaves from Scythia, that land of wild tribes even farther north and east than Thrace.