Nicolo Giraud

Nicolo or Nicolas Giraud (c. 1795 – after 1815) was a friend of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. The two met in 1809 while Byron was staying in Athens. Giraud, who at that time of their relationship was a fourteen-year-old majordomo and then student at the Capuchin monastery in Athens,^[1] reportedly taught Byron Italian, and was his travel companion in Greece. Byron paid for Giraud's education and left him £7,000 (about £630,000 in 2024) in his will. Years after they parted company, Byron changed his will to exclude Giraud. Other than his involvement with Byron, little is known of Giraud's life.

The relationship between Byron and Giraud has become a topic of interest among scholars and biographers of Byron. Some believe that the pair's interaction was platonic, while others, citing contemporary opinion and correspondence between Byron and his friends, argue that Byron engaged in sexual activity with Giraud. The earliest textual claim of a sexual relationship comes from the anonymous 19th-century poem Don Leon, believed to have been written by someone in Byron's social circle, in which the poet is the principal character and Giraud is portrayed as his liberator from the sexual prejudices in Britain.^[2]