Just curious discussion: The dress of the Thespians

[Phalanx]

I'm just curious about this, we have the Thespian Black Cloak in the game files, are there any actual historical references to Thespians wearing black/having black cloaks? Or is it just based off of that one drawing that became the definitive version of the Thespians?

I'm not pushing for change here, I'm mostly just curious about the historical facts.

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Honestly, it might be an internet meme.

[Phalanx]

I believe this is the source image

 

[Genava55]

On 10/11/2021 at 4:06 PM, Phalanx said:

I'm just curious about this, we have the Thespian Black Cloak in the game files, are there any actual historical references to Thespians wearing black/having black cloaks? Or is it just based off of that one drawing that became the definitive version of the Thespians?

I'm not pushing for change here, I'm mostly just curious about the historical facts.

Seems to have been a modern legend:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160304023218/http://www.sparta.markoulakispublications.org.uk/index.php?id=133

Spoiler

What the Thespians hoplites looked like?

by Nikolaos Markoulakis, oct. 2007

It was quite a long time ago that I received the following question from a Σparta’s reader: what the Thespian hoplites looked like? I must confess the question is interesting and should be of importance for a great number of reenactors (sic) and modelists (sic). At the same time the question is difficult to be answered regardless of its easiness and simplicity. It is, thus, a good idea to limit the question’s time broadness to a specific time of period, and we can do that by asking what the Thespian hoplite looked like in 450 to 420 B.C.E?

As you can realize my attempt to reconstruct the uniform used by the Thespiae’s hoplites starts thirty years later of Thermopylae. It was a time of period in which Thespiae had the right to construct its coins. We have two examples of coins; the one c. 456 – 446 in which the one side represents a Boeotian shield and the other an amphora with a crescent at its lower right. The other c. 431-424 has representations of a Boeotian shield, on its one side, and an inscription ΘΕΣ above a crescent. The question that must be answered before we try to draw some conclusions of the potential and more likely symbols of the Thespian’s shield, is as follows: can we trust the iconography representation available in coins?

In my opinion the answer of the above question is no. Unfortunately we cannot take in granted and drive into conclusions of the equipment and symbolism used on hoplite’s shield devices from coins’ and pottery’s iconography (see foo.¹). However, iconography can generate different conclusions, such as the religious practices, mythological concepts, general artistic attitudes, trade and financial wealth and even political/governmental stability and/or independence. These are also the conclusions that can be drawn from the already mentioned Thespian coins. There is no evidence, therefore, that can support – or definitely discard – that coins portrait shield devices and/or shield shapes. Thus, we cannot claim that a unified common blazon was in place on Thespians’ shields. We can claim that the Boeotian shield design should have been a common shield blazon as easy as to claim that the crescent was a common blazon.

Most reasonable is to say that the Thespians had in common practice the norm of ‘individual blazons’. We can even suggest that inspiration have been drawn mainly from their allies and neighbors. Most likely, when in the case of the Thespian integration to the Theban governed Boeotian league, in the early 420s, and much later (c.379) with the Spartans, their shield blazon should have been more unified.

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 @#$% 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.

[Gurken Khan]

How do you know who's playing what role if all actors wear the same?

 

Spoiler

jk