[nwrep]

Wrong. Xenophanes of Colophon was not an atheist. A more accurate description is that he was a skeptic, and only attacked the depiction of the Godly figures. He did not categorically reject the idea of a deity, as today's atheists do. Today, like mentioned above, he would correctly be called a "skeptic", or perhaps an "agnostic".

No siree. The idea of atheists as people who proudly and emphatically reject, rebuke, denounce and denigrate the idea of a spiritual being as deity is completely a modern fabrication. It did not exist before the modern age (last 2-3 centuries).

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

You can argue with Athenagoras of Athens about it if you like but he stated that Diagoras of Melos was an atheist.

Socrates probably was one as well.

Many of them claimed that if there was some sort of god then he was not the creator and did not interact with the natural world.

That allowed them to tread the thin line between being exiled or executed and just being weird.