interior of Thrace.^32 Other cities along the north Aegean continued to
mint at a time when Athenian tetradrachms were superseding other
issues in the Aegean and well beyond it. Trying tofit the minting
practices of cities along this north coastline, including Akanthos, Am-
phipolis, Abdera, Maroneia, and Ainos, into a coherent scheme around
the political vicissitudes of the Peloponnesian War, and the much-
discussed Athenian decree imposing the city’s coinage, weights, and
measures on all its allies in the Aegean, is not only difficult but a
thankless task. There is a real danger of circularity in any argument
where the evidence of anomalous minting can be explained away or
shifted quite arbitrarily upwards or down the chronological scale.^33
Coins were not issued on a regular basis, but when money was needed
for state payments. This also applies, at least partly, to bronze issues, as
we have seen, even though bronze coinage was the medium for retail
sales. Different copies of the decree on coinage, weights, and measures
imply several versions of the text, which might indicate a developing
strategy. Lisa Kallet’s suggestion that these measures could be linked to
the introduction of theeikoste—the twentieth, orfive per cent tax—from
413 bconwards offers a plausible rationale for the changes.^34
Apart from the ambiguous witness of irregular coin issues, there is
indirect evidence of north Aegean, possibly Thasian, workmanship in the
fortification of Adjiyska Vodenitsa (Pistiros). Perhaps this was the work
of Thasian exiles after the defeat by Athens in 463bc.^35 If we consider
the emergence of Pistiros (and accepting the identification with Adjiyska
Vodenitsa), then the development of an urban plan, which current
excavation indicates dates from the earliest evidence of significant activ-
ity around the eastern gateway, may have taken several decades in the
third quarter of thefifth centurybc, when we can least account for what
Thasians were doing. Various explanations have been suggested to
account for thefluctuations in tribute collected on behalf of the Delian
(^32) Picard in Grandjean and Salviat 2000, 303–6; see also Ch. 5, refs in n. 23 and n.103
above.
(^33) The Athenian decree enforcing weights and measures (ML45 = Fornara 97, variously
dated 450–6, 425/4, and 414bc) continues to arouse controversy; see most recently the
contributions to Ma et al. 2009, esp. Kallet (50–8); Papazarkadas (72; arguments in favour of
a low chronology, in the 420s); and Kroll 2009, on the volume of Athenian tetradrachm
issues and putative connections between the decree and local minting in the northern
Aegean. Archibald 1998, 114–20; Picard 2000, 249–52, on the relationship between Delian
League tribute and numbers in circulation in the Asyut hoard as evidence of continuing
economic robustness after 479 34 bc; Picard 1999, 36–9; Picard 2007, 466–7.
Kallet 2001, 217; see also Kallet 2012; cf. Kroll 2009, 201–2.
(^35) Bouzek 1996, 44–5; Picard 2007, 467.
262 The lure of the northern Aegean