Edited sentence: Apparently Rome had placed its defense in the hands of an entire army of cowards, which not only could not hold one hill but after drawing up a line of battle could not stand even the first charge of the enemy.Cocles, in this view, was the only man in the entire army with the courage to stand up, motivating two veteran generals through a sense of shame to assist him momentarily:.In the abbreviated (one section) and skeptical version of Livy, no battle took place, but "his own men, a panic-struck mob, were deserting their posts and throwing away their arms