Another Academic Heavyweight on ARMATOS for the Castus Memorial Stone

To date, I've not found a single respected, mainstream scholar who will accept ARMATOS as a reading for the fragmentary ARM[...]S in the L. Artorius Castus inscription.

Now, although rather late to the game, Dr. John Pearce (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/john-pearce), another epigraphic expert, has made his opinion known on the matter:

"While Armatos has the merit of fitting nicely, I’m not sure it would suit the context enough. With adversus one would expect either an ethnonym or some labelling of opponents with a pejorative and/ or fearsome term, rebels, deserters, hostes etc. Armati is quite neutral, I think, and wouldn’t provide the fearsome / despicable connotation for an enemy against whom he was the famed dux. Also it seems very rare as an epigraphic term, showing up mainly as a synonym for soldiers on some of the texts about who’s entitled to support from the cursus publicist."

NOTE:

Dr. Benet Salway (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/history/people/academic-staff/dr-benet-salway) has also chimed in on this matter, saying only that ARMATOS does not work for all the reasons other scholars have expressed, but mostly because when the word is used there is always a qualifier or contextual clue as to who the armed men are, or at least where they are.