Greek encampment

[John Conyard]

Surely the Anabasis shows us the opposite. Tents are for sleeping in not living in. Small tents are ideal for Greek camp since as Xenophon shows us shelter was well down the list of a general’s priorities. A camp would have been a ramshackle affair of tents, improvised bivouacs and high status tents used by posh travelling Greeks (Plutarch, Themistocles 5.4).

Van Wees took Xenophon (Anabasis 1.5.10) as giving us soldiers using animal hide to make basic one-man bivouacs much like the dog tents illustrated here. Lee decided on a safer option of tents made from leather panels. But the two interpretations do not exclude each other. We can conclude that one man tents could be made of leather panels. Others slept in the open air and of course Xenophon makes the men burn their tents when he claims to have achieved command (Anabasis 3.2.27). Even one man dog tents made of leather could be bulky and heavy.

In the Osprey book “Macedonian Warrior” Heckel and Jones use Polyaenus (Stratagemata 4.8.4) to construct an encampment of two man tents of 6 feet width with eight tents to a file each separated by about 2 feet, all sharing one fire. A pleasing if shaky arrangement based on a false camp constructed by Eumenes. Diodorus (17.95. 1-2) also gives two man tents in a false camp this time constructed by Alexander’s army.

For large single unit tents we have the fictional “Education of Cyrus” in which Xenophon describes how each unit of soldiers sleeps in one large tent provided centrally (2.1.25). He sees this as desirable over the actuality of his own experience. And two Attic red-figure vases (ARV 1426.23 and ARV 406.1 1451) show tent like structures with open sides they do not appear to be military.

[Iraklitos]

I think we have a situation where to try and go totally authentic on a tent would probably broker us vs setting up a tent that reflects the "flavor" of the period.

To illustrate this I'd say look at the string of Marathon? pictures that can be found here. 2 show the Greek encampment and 1 a Persian tent. Now anyone that has looked at various tent manufacturers will recognize the 3 tents shown as a wedge, a square end marquee and a round end marquee with very short sides (Can't remember where I've seen this style at but it's not a true marquee as it doesn't have the side posts, so it has a different name).

The point being that anyone wandering into that encampment would see the flavor of a period encampment, even if it wasn't 100% historically accurate (and being here in California with it's fire retardent laws etc... making an accurate campsite is nigh on impossible).

For a single person or a couple I'd say something along these lines would do:

http://www.tentsmiths.com/period-tents-wedge-tents.html

For the Spartan Officer's tent the OP asked about I'd think a square end marquee or army style.

As to living vs sleeping in tents. I've lived in a double bell wedge with fly for up to 10 days at a time with my wife and 2 boys while 16th Century reenacting. Would I want to do it for a year at a time? No, but for a couple of weeks straight it is doable.

It's a mindset thing. The tent is actually just there for sleeping in, unless you're an officer and need table space to conduct business at. The living part is the space out side the end of the tent - perferably under a tent fly.