Going the Way of the Ancients

This paper examines some of the issues around telling true stories in a fictional style. The author examines this issue as part of a PhD by creative work and exegesis involving the writing of a performance piece based on the activities of Olga Stambolis, a spy in Greece during World War II. Stambolis was a resistance fighter, rescuing Australian, British and New Zealand airmen caught behind enemy lines in central, western and northern Greece. Part of this paper examines Homer’s writing of The Odyssey, noting similarities not only in storytelling modalities, but with the methods of embellishment used by Greek writers including Homer and Herodotus, a style that led Plutarch to call Herodotus “the Father of Lies” for his tendency to move beyond the strict facts in his Histories (440BCE).