Even in ancient times there were great social differences between rich and poor citizens. Democritus of Abdera was fortunate to be one of the sons of wealthy parents, and from an early age Democritus was fond of spending large sums of money on trips to distant lands.

In the 5th century BC, more precise data about the Greek philosopher are unfortunately not available, Leucippus was born in Abdera or in Miletus.

In our articles about the ancient city of Kolophon (located about 35 kilometers from Izmir on the way to Kusadasi) and its important citizens, we have already reported about the outstanding philosopher Xenophanes and the poet Mimnermos from the time of ancient Greece.

One of the most important figures of Greek antiquity was the philosopher and poet Xenophanes, who was born in Colophon around 570 BC. As was usual for artists of the time, the poet could not stand the monotony of a city for long.

Born and raised in Klazomenai, Heracleides (exact biographical dates are not known) probably came to Susa as an interpreter or doctor at the beginning of the reign of the Persian great king Darius II as part of an Athenian delegation for peace negotiations after the lost war at his court.

At the time of the Greeks and Romans, who saw their scope for action primarily in the Mediterranean region, originally Indo-European tribes were able to spread in northern Europe, which could hardly be assigned by the educated Mediterranean cultures of the Greeks and Romans.

On their raids and migrations, individual tribes of the Celts advanced across the Balkans to ancient Greece in 279 BC, where they raided and plundered Delphi, among other things.

Alongside the painter Apelles and the philosopher Xenophanes, the poet Mimnermos (around 640 – 570 BC) was probably the best-known citizen of the city of Colophon, which was booming in the 6th century BC.

One of the city's residents, known far beyond the gates of Teo, was the politician and collector of literature Apellicon, who later moved to Athens and joined the tyrant Athenion there.

With the end of the epoch as collectors and hunters and the settlement in the first village groups, there were of course also new requirements in terms of water requirements and water use in the history of human development.

The term "Greek colonization" refers to the founding of Greek planting towns (Apoikia) extending from the mainland and the islands of the Aegean before and during the archaic period of Greek antiquity.

The Ancient Roman Via Egnatia enters Albania, which at that time was called Illyricum, from Ohrid in the east, then ran through Elbasan from where one arm directly connected to Dyrrhachion (todays Durres).

In Perchtoldsdorf, a market town in the district of Mödling in the vicinity of Vienna, we had met by our friend Robert some time ago. Today, one of the numerous wine regions around Vienna, the wine farming already draws conclusions to the mineral origin.

The inhabitants of the landscapes north of the Alps were described by ancient Greek philosophers like Herodot, Strabon and many others as Keltoi or Celtae, by the Romans as Galli.

Our tours through Anatolia had led us to the so-called Phrygian Valley next to Afyonkarahisar, a term for the group of people settled there from the West.

Our investigations on the peninsula of Chalkidiki had inevitably led us to the historical background of the campaigns of Xerxes, who as Achaemenid Great King and Egyptian Pharaoh reigned the vast Persian Empire between 486-465 BC.

Xenophon's birth date is uncertain, but most scholars agree that he was born around 431 BC near the city of Athens. Xenophon was born into the ranks of the upper classes, thus granting him access to certain privileges of the aristocracy of ancient Attica.

Strabo was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher. Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus (modern Amasya, Turkey), a city which he said to be situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black sea. 

The ancient Greeks generally believed that Homer was an historical individual, but modern scholars are skeptical: no reliable biographical information has been handed down from classical antiquity, and the poems themselves manifestly represent the culmination of many centuries of oral story-telling and a well-developed "formulaic" system of poetic composition.

Hesiod (Hesíodos) was a Greek oral poet and is often identified as the first economist. His date is uncertain, but leading scholars favour the eighth century BC for when Hesiod lived.