D B Campbell The Roman Army in Detail: The Problem of the First Cohort

[Renatus]

Robert wrote:

Just being curious, but why would a centurion's tent have to be larger than the other tents?
 
When I read the above line, I stopped and realised, I have no idea why I believed the centurion’s tent was larger. I must be getting confused between the object and the ground space.

Point taken. I have had a look at the Latin but this is ambiguous. There is no word for 'tent' in relation to the centurion. The word translated as 'tent' in this context by both De Voto and Gilliver is 'tensionem '. Literally, tensio means 'a stretching, stretching out, extension', so here it could mean, if one thinks of 'stretching' a tent, 'a pitch' or, if one follows the idea of 'extension', 'an extended area' of the same footage (in eadem peditura) as the two tents that would have been occupied by those on guard (eorum papilionum, 'their tents'). All that can be said is that the centurion receives double the area taken up by a single papilio but whether this means that he had a larger tent, a larger area outside his tent (perhaps for his horse, if he had one, or extra baggage) or a combination of the two is, perhaps, a matter for personal interpretation. If pushed, I would probably go for the combination but, for the reasons mentioned above, I would still contend that the centurion's tent was likely to be bigger than a normal papilio.