These two diagrams point out a fondamen-tal difference between ancientand medieval Euro-pean society.In ancient times,the ideal citizen was a landowner and merchants and artisans occupied a humbler,dependent place.In medieval and early modern times in Europe,however,towns were es-tablished initially by merchants who attended to their own defense.They looked on local landowners as rivals and often as enemies,to be kept at arms’length.The self-confidence and even aggressiveness of Europeanbourgeois classes made them different from merchants in other civilizations,who often re-mained dependents of landowning classes.