When the marching day ended, the Cyreans had to make camp. Whether they stopped for a night or for several months, they expected their camps to provide shelter and safety, a refuge from the grind of marching and fighting. In camp, the soldiers did most or all of their cooking, cleaned and maintained their equipment, groomed and fed their animals. Camps were also the bases from which troops set out to forage for water, fuel, or food. It was in camp, not on the march, that the Cyreans carried on most of their social and political life.

Anyone interested in Roman army camps will find plenty to satisfy their curiosity, from literary descriptions to visual representations to the remains of camps permanent and temporary. In contrast, archaeological evidence for classical Greek military camps is virtually non-existent and literary testimony scarce at best. What little evidence ancient texts provide, moreover, refers not to the unified doctrine of a single military institution, but to a diversity of poleis, each with its own customs. Xenophon furnishes more information than most – his Cyropaedia briefly describes the layout of an ideal Persian camp, and the Constitution of the Lacedaemonians outlines some of the fourth-century Spartan army's camp organization. If the Anabasis brims with stories set against the backdrop of bivouac, though, it never explicitly describes how the Cyreans arranged their halting places.