Why Byron’s a punchline in Britain – yet a god in Greece
200 years after his death some sneer at the warrior-poet – but Athenians worship him as a national treasure
!['If you lived a Dionysus, you died a Messiah': Thomas Phillips's 1813 portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian dress](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/04/11/TELEMMGLPICT000372672918_17128388006220_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq31jXWP--5AqCJGnH_SmXv-hYHO75Ra6hFopIFSHGYrQ.jpeg?imwidth=350)
200 years after his death some sneer at the warrior-poet – but Athenians worship him as a national treasure
Christopher Childers has spent 10 years on The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse – and his translations sing from the page