Homosexuality in history

Byron lived a complicated, often extremely scandalous life: he has an ongoing reputation as one of the most sexually adventurous people in literary history, and his exploits shaped his biography significantly. He was generally thought of as being a libertine, and was rumored to have any number of sexual affairs with women, including a countess who was only fourteen years of age when they began their involvement and his own half-sister. However, it is important to recognize that what was scandalous about Byron’s personal life was not just his many lovers — it was also the relatively well-known fact that he was sexually intimate with men as well.

Byron had very close friendships with other boys from the time he was in school, and was already trying to defend his relationships with men as a teenager. He wrote a series of elegies when his...