Hekte

Mytilene dominated electrum hektai production on Lesbos across the late fifth and early fourth centuries, issuing a remarkable succession of matched obverse-reverse type pairs that changed with unusual regularity — a practice scholars believe reflects annual or biennial reissues tied to civic or festival cycles rather than simple monetary demand. The natural electrum alloy sourced from the region carried a gold content that varied batch to batch, and Bodenstedt's exhaustive typology of the series revealed that later issues like this one trend toward a slightly lower gold proportion than earlier Mytilenean output.