ARMATURA is more particularly used in the ancient military art, for a kind of exercise, performed with missive weapons, as darts, spears, arrows, and the like. In this sense, armatura stands contradistinguished from palaria; the latter being the exercise of the heavy-armed, the former of the light-armed.
The armatura was practised with great diligence among the Romans; they had their campidoctores, on purpose to instruct the tyrones or young soldiers in it. Under it were included the throwing of the spear or javelin, shooting with bows and arrows, &c.