Hekte

Mytilene and Phokaia jointly regulated the production of electrum hektai under a treaty — likely formalized in the early fifth century — that standardized the alloy composition and weight standard between the two minting cities. The arrangement is unusual in the Greek world: two rival poleis coordinating monetary output rather than competing. Bodenstedt's corpus remains the definitive typological reference, and his sequencing places this emission well within Mytilene's most active striking period, before the catastrophic revolt against Athens that ended in 427 BC with a near-total sentence of death for the city's male population — a fate narrowly reversed by a second Athenian assembly vote.