Late Roman Unit Sizes

[Robert Vermaat]

However. I don't think it's such a huge leap that the origin of the auxilia palatina as a body lay in non-citizen recruitment. Why else would they be called by that name? Every other reference to auxiliaries (as far as I know) connotes non-citizen troops.

As I say, Roman citizens were found in these units relatively soon (the cornutus Flavius Aemilianus, above, being one of them) - but unless they had their roots in non-citizen formations, perhaps of the tetrarchic era, why would they be called auxilia?

Because of the literal meaning? Given their status they seem to have been set up as a sort of guards corps, but we don't really know much about their origin. Like the 'stablesiana' we can guess that their names have anything to do with their originins, but we don't really know.
But many if not most Roman units, limitanei or comitatenses, seem to have been recruited to an unknown extent from non-citizen soldiers, so in that sense I don't really see any difference betwwen the auxilia palatina or the other units of the field army. And like I said, assuming that the auxilia were 100% non-citizens is a circular reasoning without any proof.

So many of the late Roman regiments have fanciful names linking them to the past. I still don't see the point in taking some literally (like discussions about 'crossbow-armed regimets') while (rightly) assinging others to a fanciful mind. The name 'auxilia' so far is no exception to that.