As far as their entitlement as melachites, I must confess that I never heard before this title for Thespiae’s hoplites and/or for any of the hoplites. Once again that is a tendency to stick the element of uniformity and contingency. There is no evidence whatsoever that address the Thespian’s uniform as black and/or dark cloaked, as the term melachites points out.
Let us see now where we can find it in literature. The term melachiton (μελαχίτων) which means literary the black-cloaked is mentioned at the chorus in Aeschylus’ Persians which seems to be more like an allegorical image of a ‘scared heart’ (Aesh. Pers. 115). The same kind of meaning – the scared and weak – can been seen in Eumenides, the black-robed, μελανείμων, and the bringers of fear and of self-destruction (Aesh. Eumenides 2.38). There is also the μελαμπέπλῳ στολῇ, the black-robe in which Admetor was dressed – as well as the Spartan Tundareos (Orestes 12.43)- for their πὲνθος (Alcestis 258, 425), extreme sense of sadness. It is also mentioned by Herodotus (4.102,1; 4.107.1) as μελάγχλαινος, the back-cloaked, but for non of the Greek armies and hoplites but rather for the nation-tribe neighboring Scythians as they had also the same customs, who they named as such because of their black uniforms.
For me, thus, it makes more sense to call the Scythians black-cloaked rather than the Thespians. But why, regardless the literary and iconography lack of evidences many believe that the Thespians whore a black-cloak? For some believe that the Thespian army was dressed in black because they worshiped the Melainis Aphrodite, meaning ‘the dark one’ or ‘of the graves’, which was an epithet of the Goddess under which she was worshiped at Corinth (Paus. 2.2.4; ff. 8.6.2, 9.17.4; Athen. 8). I cannot see any mentioned evidences that linked the cult with Thespiae and if indeed there was a cult of Melainis Aphrodite why it became the reason of the supposed black-cloaked Thespians and not of the Corinthians who were so well-known of their cults in honor of the Goddess? And why only the Thespians choose to wear a color so much interrelated with sadness and bad luck? I am sure they did not. It is difficult for me to imagine that only the Thespiae’s hoplites decided to bring with them bad fortune’s symbol at war.
