Holy Men and Charlatans in the Ancient Novel (Hardcover)

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).