Page 49 - Beholding Liberty!

PERISTYLE
I.1.8
Lord Byron
The Works [...] in four volumes.
Vol. IV. Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte – Poems – Hebrew melodies.
London: John Murray, Albemarle –Street. 1816. Library of the Hellenic Parliament
THIS EDITION of Lord Byron’s works includes three works of Greek interest.
The first two are short poems, written in Athens in 1810, one of which is the famous “Maid of Athens”, written about Teresa, the 12-year-old youngest daughter of three of Theodora Makri, the widow of the former British consul in Athens, in whose house Byron stayed, along with his travelling companion, John Cam Hobhouse. The poet fell instantly in love with young Teresa and dedicated to her what was to become his most famous poem, thanks also to its setting to music by a number of composers.
The third “Greek” poem in the same Byronic collec- tion is his lyrical version of “Sons of the Greeks, Arise” an adaptation by Rhigas Feraios of the Marseillaise, which, alongside Rhigas’s “Thourios”, are the two fa- mous anthems by the early revolutionary Rhigas.
These poems demonstrate Byron’s strong personal bonds with Greece, its people and its history, already pre-Revolution, which morphed into engaged Philhel- lenism with the outbreak of the Greek Revolution [cat. no II.8.B].
THE AWAKENING OF HELLENISM From Archaeoloatry to Philhellenism 49