Military comparison between Hannibal and Scipio began early, with their conversation at Ephesus, 193. First rule of generalship was: stay alive as ‘battle manager’; this had to be balanced by felt need for heroic leadership. Both learned warlike skills from relatives (Scipio grew up with three consular uncles and a consular father), but the biggest lesson was to avoid these men’s premature battle deaths. Army reforms are reviewed; Scipio’s are better attested. In logistics, both faced similar problems, but Hannibal’s isolation meant his challenges were greater. For weaponry, Hannibal had to improvise and recycle. Hannibal’s tactics were superior to Roman at the outset, but Scipio learned from his enemy. Both practised ‘Punic’ deception. Neither shone at siege or naval warfare. Hannibal’s struggle for Italian hearts and minds conflicted with his need to extract supplies. On man management, Scipio’s handling of Pleminius was a blemish. Unlike Scipio, Hannibal never faced a mutiny.

This chapter considers ethical prototypes, which give needed specificity to the very general ethical orientations defined by principles and parameters. In ethical decision and behavior, we are concerned with sequences of actions and the motivations guiding these actions. In other words, we are concerned with stories. In this chapter, I argue that the prototypes at issue in specifying our ethical orientations are, most importantly, the universal story structures that I have sought to isolate in earlier works – heroic, romantic, sacrificial, family separation, seduction, revenge, and criminal investigation. These narrative structures are inseparable from human emotion systems. Indeed, story universals are shaped by emotion–motivation systems (along with some general patterns in emotion intensification); those systems (and patterns) account for their universality. In addition, these story genres are of crucial importance for the way we think about and respond to various worldly concerns, such as politics. The third chapter extends these arguments to ethics.

Just as the second chapter provides a literary development of the relatively abstract first chapter, so too the fourth chapter provides literary developments of the cross-cultural genres treated in the third chapter. Specifically, this chapter considers literary cases of all the prominent, universal genres, examining their implications for ethical evaluation and action. In keeping with the cross-cultural range of these genres, this chapter considers works from different time periods and different regions. It includes discussions of the Bhagavad Gītā, Hamlet, and All’s Well That Ends Well, Yuan period Chinese dramas (The Zhao Orphan and Selling Rice in Chenzhou), as well as more recent fiction and nonfiction from India (Nectar in a Sieve) and Australia (Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence). The longest section develops a particularly detailed interpretation of the sacrificial structure in F. W. Murnau’s film, Nosferatu. I undertake a more extensive development of this analysis to illustrate more clearly the impact of story structure on moral response.

Medieval writing in German is characterized by a tension between religious and secular elements from the very beginnings of writing in the vernacular. The chapter therefore challenges conventional views of medieval German literature and its relationship with religion and argues for a complex, often self-aware negotiation of differences between secular and religious points of view. Gender plays a significant role in these negotiations from the beginning, because religious women writing in Latin as well as the vernacular explore new modes of articulating a relationship with God in literary texts. In setting out the complex and manifold ways in which medieval poets across the centuries explore the position of the human against transcendental forces, the chapter thus questions the common master-narrative which sees the Reformation as a radical break with earlier practices, arguing instead for a literary culture in which formation and re-formation of the self are negotiated in multiple ways.