Stater

Lesbos operated an unusual monetary arrangement in the archaic period: several cities on the island — Mytilene, Methymna, and others — shared a common coinage standard rather than competing with separate civic issues, which is why attribution to any single polis remains impossible for much of this series. The billon alloy itself is a deliberate choice, not debasement; Lesbian mints consistently used electrum-adjacent alloys well into the period when mainland Greeks had largely committed to pure silver.