The "three men" may refer to Horatius Cocles and his two companions who defended the Sublician Bridge, a legend recounted in Macaulay's poem "Horatius, published as part of the Lays of Ancient Rome, in 1842, or alternatively to the three assassins of Julius Caesar (Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus) who aimed to preserve the Roman Republic from tyranny.