Late Roman Army - seniores and iuniores

[Nathan Ross]

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Not a great deal, I'm afraid. The author of the Chronicon seems be backdating to the mid 3rd century the formation of the Candidati close-protection unit from picked men of the Scholae Palatina; both Candidati and Scholae are more conventionally dated to the 4th century.

Several of the Scholae units listed in the Notitia Dignitatum are numbered - Schola scutariorum prima, for example, or Schola scutatorium tertia. The last note in this Chronicon entry suggests the existence of a Schola Sexta at some point. Whether this was a real unit, or the Chronicon writer has just assumed that it existed, we cannot know.

Similarly, several scholae were distinguished by the title seniores or iuniores, just like other late Roman army units. The Schola armaturarum seniorum and Schola gentilium seniorum are in the west, while the Schola armaturarum iuniorum and Schola gentilium iuniorum (and a duplicate Schola gentilium seniorum, just to confuse things) are in the east.

Why the Chronicon writer thought these titles were derived from the names of the emperors Gordianus and Philippus is obscure. The whole thing sounds like an invented etymology to explain the titles of various units found in the 6th-7th century, with which the Chronicon writer will have been familiar.