ABSTRACT
Lukas, the 15-year-old son of a Greek widow whom he helped. Lukas appears not to have returned Byron’s love, as suggested in his poem ‘On This Day I Complete My Thirty Sixth Year’. Byron died of fever at Missolonghi. After his death his friend Hobhouse persuaded Byron’s publisher John Murray, and Thomas Moore, to destroy his memoirs. In his own works Byron never expressed his homosexuality very clearly, possibly for fear of the repercussions that such publication entailed. However, within a decade of his death a pseudo-autobiography, entitled Don Leon, a Poem by Lord Byron appeared that offered detailed accounts of his affairs. This poem was an attempt to protest against the capital punishment that was still meted out to those found guilty of homosexual acts.
