The present volume comprises the papers delivered at RICAN 6, which was held in Rethymnon, Crete, on May 30-31, 2011. The focus is placed on male and female characters in the ancient novel and related texts, both pagan and Christian, these characters are presented either as holy or as charlatans but in several cases the two categories cannot be easily distinguished from each other. The papers offer a wide and rich range of perspectives: authority in narratives and authority figures from Teiresias to Apollonius of Tyana as comparands for Kalasiris in Heliodorus (Dowden), the astrologer Serapa as a holy man in Petronius and Trimalchio's exploitation of Serapa's pronouncement and his prediction (Schmeling), the old hag Oenothea as a figure of religious authority and medical expertise in the Satyrica and Encolpius' failure to recognize her as a charlatan (Panayotakis), Cleitophon's claims to knowledge in Achilles Tatius and his apparent lack of understanding of his own narrative (Repath), religious authority in Daphnis and Chloe and the role of the exegetes (¿expounder') in Longus' preface (Bowie), the Syrian priests and other religious charlatans in Apuleius' Metamorphoses and their appeal to the reader (Egelhaaf-Gaisser), the contrast in the representation of holy men and charlatans in Lucian's Peregrinus and the Christian Acts of Mar Mari (Ramelli), the controversial figure of Kalasiris in Heliodorus, a priest who behaves like a charlatan (Billault), Apollonius of Tyana as Proteus and Philostratus' contest with Homer in the Life of Apollonius (Paschalis), the similarities in the narrative structure of the biographies of Aesop and Jesus (Andreassi), narrative qualities and intertextuality in the Narrations attributed to Neilos of Ankyra, its interpretation as a conversion-narrative (Morgan).