The design of the Guard’s legionary camp is modeled almost directly from a Roman legion’s consular encampment, sometimes called a “simple camp” from the time before Caesar and the rise of the cohort divisions within a legion, which required a different camp design.

The length of a consular camp (two legions) was 2,017 Roman feet per wall. A Roman foot is 11.65 inches. The two-thirds division for the men/one-third for officers, the four gates, the staked palisade and ditch, are all copied from that design.

The size of the legion at 4,200 foot and 300 horse is also copied from the Roman legion of that time period. Numbers change though, depending on whether the legion is at full strength.

I fiddled with the depth of the ditch (it varies in Roman accounts, Caesar said 15 feet deep once, but that might have been deeper than normal since he called it a “double ditch”). I kept the width of the berm at eight feet, and six feet minimum height. I added the double gate idea, but the Romans did build towers at their gates to defend them.

The rings of sentries and sentinels on the walls, and a large guard at the gate, is all normal, except that I haven’t mentioned the active cavalry and infantry deployments outside the camp itself yet. There would be rings of those as well.

The exact length of the stakes I made 4.5 ft. I’m not sure what the length of a Roman legion stake was.

The width of the lanes and the length of the wall is copied from the Roman encampment.

I’m looking forward to playing around with the Roman design some more, and adding my interpretation to it in this story, especially in how it would be used.

A bit of history with your story.

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