Bishop Liutprand of Cremona—the same one who saw the emperor magically lifted up into the air at the Magnaura Palace—tried to smuggle some out of Constantinople, but he was caught.
He tried to bluff his way through the customs by roaring, “Your emperor Nicephorus came to his throne by lying and crime! He told me I could buy all that I wanted to. Where is the imperial promise?”
But although Liutprand was an ambassador from the German emperor, the Byzantines merely smiled at him.
“You poverty-stricken Italians and Germans are not meant to appear in such gorgeous material. Only we Byzantines, who are unique in virtue, have a right to wear them.”
They forced him to open his baggage and took five of the most splendid pieces. But they did pay him back the money he had spent.
None of this Byzantine silk, and none of the other marvelous things they made either, would have added very much to Byzantine gold and glitter if the Byzantines had kept all for themselves. Little as the average Byzantine liked to risk his money in foreign adventures, it was foreign trade that brought most of their wealth.
Byzantine foreign trade reached out all over the world. The Byzantines imported animal skins, slaves, and sometimes wheat from Russia; precious stones from India; spices from Ceylon; embroidered rugs from Spain and Morocco; ores and wrought metals from Italy and Germany; wool and woolen goods from the Low Countries and England; hemp, flax, and amber from the Balkans and the north. These were only a few things they imported. Some of these things were shipped out again; for instance, they shipped amber from the Baltic to the Far East.
The Byzantines even penetrated darkest Africa. Not only did they do business with the Ethiopian kingdom of Axum on the Red Sea where the temperature sometimes went up to 120°, but they may even have gone with the dark-skinned Axumite merchants to the mysterious city of Zambabwe. There, in the heart of the jungle, Negro tribesmen built towers, walls, and palaces so mighty that even today men look at the ruins and wonder how they did it.
Gold seemed to be as plentiful as pebbles in Zambabwe, and you traded with the natives in the following way: You built a thick thorn breastwork, and on it you placed salt, iron, and the carcasses of cattle. Then you went away, and the natives slipped out of the forest and placed beans of gold upon each object. Later on you came back and if you thought they had left enough, you took the gold and the natives carried off the meat and salt and iron. If not, you moved away and the natives were given a chance to leave more gold. Sometimes this bartering went on for four or five days. Neither side saw, or even talked to, the other.
The Byzantines were able to carry on this world business, because their principal city, Constantinople, had one of the most strategic locations in the known world of that time. It was like a spider in the center of a spider web; practically every trade route in the world passed through it.