Byron in Greece

Lord Byron (George Gordon) is most commonly remembered as the author of Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrammage, as one of the foremost and most influential poets of the English Romantic movement. He is also widely known as the "first modern celebrity", wildly popular not just in Britain but right across Western Europe, and for his scandalous private life (he once claimed to have lost his virginity to his nanny at the age of nine). But in one country at least he is better remembered for his politics than for his poetry or his scandals.

Greece was always important to the English Romantics as a source of poetic inspiration, and many of them were opposed to the Turkish occupation of the country. For example, Byron's close friend P. B. Shelley wrote Hellas: A Lyrical Drama in 1821, intending to use it to raise money for the Greek War of Independence. The play is modelled on Aeschylus' Persians, and it depicts the Turks as latter-day Persians and the Greek independence movement as the modern heirs of Leonidas and the Three Hundred Spartans. But Byron went further than raising funds and writing sympathetic verses: Byron went to Greece to join the independence movement in person.

In his earlier life, he had visited Greece and enjoyed good relations with the Ottoman ruling class. It was even rumoured that, as a young man, he had had a homosexual relationship with Ali Pasha, Ottoman Governor of Rumelia. But when he returned in July 1823 he had been thoroughly "radicalised", and was utterly committed to the removal of Turkish rule from Hellas. He first landed at Kephallonia where, at his own expense, he outfitted a Greek revolutionary navy. In December of the same year he sailed to Missolonghi in the Peloponnese, to join up with the forces commanded by the revolutionary leader Alexandros Mavrokordatos. He endured shipwreck and several exciting "chases" by Turkish ships. He brought with him much-needed medical supplies, and he proceeded to raise and train (again at his own expense) an artillery corps for the revolutionary cause.

Byron was, for the most part, highly regarded by the Greek revolutionaries. As an "outsider", he had no evident bias towards any of the quarrelling factions that made up the resistance movement (though he believed that the Western Greeks were the bravest and most effective fighters), and much of his time was spent in settling disputes between them. Byron was always prone to depression, and his experience of the endless disputes put him in a bad mood, and his health deteriorated all through this period. Though a crack shot, he never took part in any military actions himself. Byron hoped to take part in an attack on Lepanto in February 1824. However, he fell ill and could not sail. Two months later he died at Missolonghi.His remains were shipped back to England - with the exception of his heart (or some sources maintain his lungs!) which was buried in Greece.

His contribution to the Greek cause of independence is often dismissed, but he did achieve some good for the revolutionaries. His financial aid and diplomacy brought stability and much-needed unity to the cause. Moreover, Byron was a Europe-wide celebrity, and his involvement in the cause brought great publicity to what had previously been an issue of only minor public interest.

In Greece, he is held up as a hero of the resistance. There are at least two Byron museums in the country (one in Athens, one in Missolonghi), and it is very common as one travels through Greece to see roads called "Byron Street". "Byron", I am told, used to be a very common boy's name in Greece, and at one time the literary lord even had a Greek cigarette brand named after him (when you see how many people smoke in Greece, you realise that this is a high honour indeed!). One of the columns in the ancient Temple of Poseidon at Sounion even boasts a piece of "graffiti" that Byron wrote during a visit there, which the Greek Ministry of Culture assiduously maintains as an important cultural artefact in its own right.