The Byzantines also had a large number of unusually fine seaports in other parts of the empire. Besides Constantinople itself, there was Smyrna, Thessalonica, Patras, and in the early days, Alexandria. There were several others, many of which are very good seaports even today.
The Byzantines also knew how to promote business. We are apt to think of a world’s fair as something modern, but the Byzantines knew all about them. Every year, in October, they held an enormous trade fair on the Vardar plain outside Thessalonica. There they built a huge temporary wood-and-canvas city of booths and bazaars, and even amid the troubled Middle Ages, merchants and peddlers flocked to it from all over. It was only later, when the Byzantines became proud and haughty, refusing to seek business while they sat on their doorsteps waiting for business to come to them, that they got into trouble. Then the energetic Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans took over.
But nothing had more to do with making the Byzantines successful in world trade than the sound Byzantine money. Their gold coin, known to us as the bezant, was one of the four most widely accepted pieces of money the world has ever known. The other three are the Florentine florin, which made the Medici bankers so rich, the English pound sterling, and now the United States dollar. Any one of these would be accepted anywhere in the world during the time it was in use.
GOLD BEZANT
The reason the Byzantine coin was stable is that no one ever tampered with the bezant. In the old days, kings used to clip their coins (that is, use a little less gold in them), but no emperor ever clipped the bezant. It was always kept at its full value.
An old Byzantine writer tells a story which shows both how valuable the bezant was and how it traveled.
A Greek merchant was in Ceylon when he got into an argument with a Persian merchant as to whose ruler was the more powerful.
“Mine,” said the Persian. “He is King of Kings.”
“Why argue?” asked the Greek. “They are both in the room. Compare them.”