Hello! The men of renown to me were epic "demi-god" heroes like Gilgamesh, in the fashion of Hercules, Orion, etc.
Nimrod was associated with the constellation later known as Orion and called Nephila.
They link also to talk of "The Golden Age" and continued to exist in the minds of some people as spiritual beings.
I find there was a kind of mixture of ideas existing throughout the Ancient Mediterranean world where the Greeks and Mesopotamians and Egyptians all had some mutual influence and participation and widely accepted the general myths and stories of old as things people would frequently hear and imagine, and in their imaginations and depictions, the semi-divine heroes were these gigantic men who were sometimes mixed with attributes of beasts as well and were basically like super heroes with super strength (might) and dazzling power (glory) which made them truly outstanding in every way.
The "gods" or "angels" which mixed with humans and parented them may have had special domains or abilities, like a special water power so then their kid would be a super hero somehow associated with some water connection etc.
In Greek mythology, Minos was linked to bulls because his parentage was connected to stormy Zeus coming as a mighty bull and mating with a human, and this lineage of Bull stuff seemed to pass down until the Minotaur came to be.
Often these stories emerging had reasons, and many times they also found themselves among the stars, which likewise was considered the place from which the descent from heaven occurred.
So I think to the minds of most people in the context of the time periods where when hearing "men of renown" they would think of the super heroes of their time, the epic kings and heroes, for the Greeks they had their characters from their epics, Mesopotamians had theres, everyone basically had these semi divine heroic figures in the olden days who were imagined as big and strong and able to wrestle with great beasts and all that, supermen.
While in increasing conflict with and due to fears of assimilation and feelings of alienation and attitudes of separation and policies of segregation, these figures became increasingly demonized by certain populations, so that the Titans and Epic Heroes and lesser Gods mostly became villains, save a few very popular terms which became angels or especially able to be preserved even though there may have been some efforts to expel them as well by fundamentalist extremists. One such figure is Mikal to Michael.
The Hellenistic Jewish people who widely spoke Aramaic had a huge amount of stories which they generally seemed to accept in some way as being some sort of truth, and so Titans under the Earth or Mesopotamian teacher visitors from the Gods being punished smoothly seemed to reference angels held deep under the Earth as punishment and so on.
Now adays we might scoff at stories about ancient super men, and some people did even then or took them as untrue but true as metaphors or symbols just like some do today, but the terms were used so widely and frequently that they were basically included or accepted as normal things to make reference to, like how we might talk about Jesus today or the Buddha maybe. Sometimes certain figures were even linked to a whole people who were imagined as their mini-me type clones who were like a dispersal of their great body, not dissimilar to how a community might be considered the body of Christ, and how Greeks talked about their armies as a body with different sections as the body parts, like a giant person, the legs the cavalry, the general the head, the main soldiers the torso, etc.
When it gives the names of ancestral figures as the name of a nation, it may be because that nation was considered the body of that person, the figure at large through its many varying duplicates.
This also can explain why it was imagined that entire populations should be eradicated, so that all life of that giant multi-entity form is extinguished and nothing lasts of it.
The form of Egypt was Rahab, a giant sea creature, likely a crocodile or sea serpent/dragon.
Looking at an army or nation from afar, and how they lived together m and moved, could also be anthropomorphized poetically and imagined as some giant or sprawled out creature.
The body of the Jewish people or Hebrews was split up and carted off which was imagined as weakening their power through having an organized network of communication and a mass of population.
The Persians were connected to Ursa Major, later considered the Angel called Bear of El (Dubhiel) and Ursa sits close to the center of everything in the sky, the North Star which everything seems to revolve around and circle. The Persians may likewise have been imagined as having bear like qualities and being in the shape of a great big bear. The scales of their armor and gloves as the fur of a bear and its bulk, or their layers of clothing for warmth or whatever may possibly have found in the minds of some people associations with bears as well, just like the Egyptians had been linked with the dragon, ironically, probably at a time that Draconis was more at the center in the sky before the Bear became more central. The people believed that the Heavens and the Earth and Afterlife were in a mirroring state or each influencing the next level.
Its a whole different worldview and one that has some lingering residual today but is mostly entirely alien to the way we think about and accept things.
Alexander was linked to a lion and lions were considered something linked to the Evil One potentially.
The Greeks have the story of hiding in the form of a horse, and the horse was the symbol of the sea and Poseidon who was on the side of the sea-faring Greeks.
Each of the Epic Kings and heroes frequently represented their whole people, the body of their nation and its head and face.
Similarly, Gods were considered the whole of whatever theme, a river might be the body of some lesser God who is in the overall body of some greater God etc as a little version of the bigger complex.
