It means more than that.
If you wrap your head around the stoic idea of virtues, I think it would make sense.
Rules can be followed by inaction. I can sit on my couch and not break any rules. Virtues require taking action. I cannot show courage by sitting on my couch doing nothing as a general rule. Maybe in a weird contrived edge case, but usually courage requires action.
Now there is the issue of which action. Well that depends on the situation. In each situation as life unfolds where courage is relevant you can be courageous or chicken. You can say as each scenario passes that an action was or wasn't courageous. It isn't until I'm dead that the story is over and you can say I was courageous as a person because at any time still living I can simply stop living up to that virtue and the balance of my actions starts tipping towards chicken.
So you can say I chose the manly path in a specific scenario. My manliness as a man remains in the balance until I've died and you can measure every time I was faced with a decision where manliness was in question and I chose manliness against the times where I made the unmanly choice.
