Lord Byron is one of the most famous narrative poets of the Romantic period and was a philhellene. Philhellene means “lover of Greece.” He was not born with Greek blood but loved the country of Greece so much that he fought in the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s and died for the nation.
Byron was good-looking and came from a wealthy family. He was infamously known for scandals and love affairs throughout his life, but also for his heroism and his historic feats. The Greeks call him “Λόρδος Βύρωνας” and he died for the freedom of Greece in Mesolongi in 1824 at the age of 36.
Lord Byron’s Early Life
Lord Byron was born in Scotland in 1788. He inherited his uncle’s title of Lord at the age of 10. He attended Harrow, then Trinity College, then Cambridge, and he built enormous debts while there. Here, he began to write poetry and traveled throughout Portugal, Spain, and the Near East. His first successful book was Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812).
Lord Byron remarks “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.” Suddenly, everyone wanted to have his same poetry, manners, and tastes. Lord Byron married in 1815 to Anne Milbanke. Their daughter August Ada was known to be a mathematics genius and is said to be one of the first computer programmers.
Lord Byron’s First Sight of Greece
He lived a storied young life, entering the House of Lords when he turned 21. He left the following year to head to the Mediterranean, and there he wrote his most famous poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He met Ali Pasha and traveled all over Greece. He loved all the monuments from Ancient Greece and fell in love with the daughter of a British consul Theodoros Makris. Byron was known to write poems about the women which he loved.
Lord Byron Joins the Greek Resistance
In 1823, Lord Byron was invited to fight with the Greeks against the Ottomans. Because Lord Byron was at the time a famous figure with a great amount of wealth, he turned the Greek fight for freedom into an international phenomenon. He embraced the values of the Enlightenment and constantly fought to stop the rise of civil war among the Greeks themselves, who were notoriously known for infighting.
Lord Byron helped Greece operate differently than other sections of the Ottoman Empire, which were led by local warlords. His donations of 4000 Pounds (today about 300,000 Pounds) to repair Greek ships had a crucial role in changing the course of the War for Independence.
The Ottoman troops who were closing in on Missolonghi disappeared when there was information that Byron financed ships and that the fleet was coming from Hydra and Spetses. The loan tipped the fight in favor of the Greeks against the Ottomans.
Lord Byron’s Heroic Death
Prophetically, Byron once noted a “presentiment that I shall die in Greece.”After joining the Greeks as a soldier, he traveled to Cephalonia, where he stayed for 6 months. Next, he moved to Morias in the Peloponnese. In March of 1824, he was training with his fellow troops in the cold and fell ill with a fever. The doctors decided to treat him with leeches, but it failed and Lord Byron died soon after.
Byron was famously quoted saying that “I have given her [Greece] my time, my means, my health…And now I give her my life! What could I do more?”
Traces of Lord Byron in Greece Today
Byron’s death was mourned through all of Greece. To this day, many streets are named after him. There are memorials to Lord Byron in the Psiri district of Athens, and also in the Temple of Poseidon in Sounion, where Lord Byron’s name is etched into the marble steps. Most noticeably, in the city center near the National Garden is a statue that depicts Greece in the form of a woman cradling Lord Byron.
