Late Roman Unit Sizes

[Robert Vermaat]

Ammianus uses the word to refer both to the auxilia palatina of the field army, and to various contingents of barbarian troops (Goths etc). This implies that the auxilia of the later army were indeed originally raised from non-citizens, although their elite status and immunity from certain duties clearly made them attractive to citizen recruits as well, as Ammianus himself points out.

Not necessarily. I agree with the current notion that Late Roman 'auxilia palatina' were named after the 'auxilia'of the Principate and before, yet they were not based on either a class difference or non-citizen troops. To my knowledege this has never been established and the idea that the name (auxilia) leads to an origin of the troops (non-citizens) is therefore a huge leap that I'm unwilling to risk.

An analogy may be found in the 'buccellarii', which originally were private forces, bodyguards, developing into privately-finaced regiments. However, still later the name is used for quite regular regiments in the army, with only the name reminiscent of the origin. The same applies to the late Roman 'auxilia palatina'.