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Posted 18 September 2009, Greek time.
Lord Byron might have been killed in a duel on Malta before he ever set eyes on Greece.
On September 18, 1809, he wrote a letter to Captain Cary, Aide-de-camp to the military commander in Malta, challenging him to a duel at 6am the following morning. Byron felt insulted by Cary's intolerable insolence. "As the vessel in which I am to embark must sail the first change of wind, the sooner our business is arranged the better".
In another letter (May 3, 1810) he explains: "At Malta I fell in love with a married woman and challenged an aid du camp of Genl.Oakes (a rude fellow who grinned at something, I never rightly knew what,) but he explained and apologised, and the lady embarked for Cadiz, & so I escaped murder and adultery."
One suspects that it would have been Byron who would have been killed. Instead, he set sail for these shores, and he lived to see another day. The rest is history.
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