Horácio Cocles, o cowboy.

Tropecei num artigo intitulado "One-Eyed Gods and One-Armed Gods: Does True Grit tap into an ancient myth?". Nele, Paul Devlin expõe uma curiosa teoria que apresenta Horácio Cocles como a inspiração para o lendário Rooster Cogburn, personagem de filmes western (a última interpretação é a de Jeff Bridges no filme True Grit - Indomável, de 2010). 
Devlin parte de uma obra de Georges Dumezil (Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty), um estudo que explora, cito, "two ancient Indo-European conceptions of justice represented by the one-eyed sovereign (wild, unreliable, ruling through bravado) and the one-handed sovereign (solemn, proper, ruling by the letter of the law)".
Um bom e surpreendente exemplo da influência clássica na cultura contemporânea...

[...] In Roman mytho-history (Romans liked to give their history a mythic burnish), one-eyed Horatio Cocles ("Cocles" being derived from "Cyclops") and soon to be one-handed Mucius Scaevola team up to defeat Lars Porsenna, an invading Etruscan determined to sack Rome. According to Dumzeil, the one-eyed Cocles "holds the enemy in check by his strangely wild behavior." Citing the Roman historian Livy, Dumezil writes that "remaining alone at the entrance to the bridge, [Cocles] casts terrible and menacing looks at the Etruscan leaders, challenging them individually, insulting them collectively." He also deploys "terrible grimaces."

Cocles' antics stop Porsenna temporarily, but the surly Etruscan soon brings war upon Rome again, and this time it's Scaevola, whose mind ran in a more statesmanlike track than his comrade Cocles, to the rescue. He warns Porsenna that he has 300 assassins at his disposal—it's a bluff, but Scaevola burns his hand in a fire to convince his enemy his threat is bona fide. Porsenna agrees to leave Rome be.

How does this all relate to True Grit? Rooster Cogburn is a one-eyed U.S. Marshal who doles out his own brand of frontier justice, not caring much for the niceties of the legal system. When we first meet him, he's being forced under cross-examination to admit that he's killed 23 men while working as a marshal. It's clear he'd rather be behind a rifle sight than on the witness stand. Like Odhinn, Cogburn is comfortable with lying to his enemies (he exaggerates the number of marshals he has with him when attempting to take on a crew of bandits in a cabin). Like Cocles, he attacks his enemy with wild behavior. In the climactic fight scene, Cogburn takes on the four men of the Lucky Ned Pepper gang with abandon—his two revolvers drawn and the reins of his horse between his teeth. In Charles Portis' novel, from which True Grit was adapted, Cogburn is described as "snapping his head from side to side to bring his good eye into play." In the film, we see a menacing look in his eye when his teeth take the reins. Earlier in the film he tells Mattie of a time he pulled a similar stunt against seven men. 
[...]
Are Rooster and Mattie modern manifestations of the ancient allegorical characters Dumezil studied? Or are they merely two different personality types: the charismatic, devil-may-care swaggerer and the exacting, careful planner—Dionysus and Apollo, Oscar and Felix. [...]