Nicolo or Nicolas Giraud ( – 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, reportedly taught Byron Italian, and was his travel companion in Greece. Byron paid for Giraud's education and left him £7,000 (about £ in ) 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. Life Nicolas Giraud was born in Greece to French parents; the name by which he is most commonly known, Nicolo, was given to him by Byron. Giraud may have been the brother-in-law of Giovanni Battista Lusieri, a Roman painter and broker for Lord Elgin. Demetrius Zograffo, Byron's guide in Greece, informed Byron that the 60-year-old Lusieri was unmarried, and was courting two women, each of whom believed that Lusieri was to marry her. Lusieri certainly had a close relationship with Giraud, so it is possible that the two were related in another way, perhaps as father and son. Byron met Giraud in Athens in January 1809 when he was fourteen, and later paid for Nicolo to study at the Capuchin monastery in Athens. In 1810, Giraud began to teach Byron Italian. The two spent their days studying and swimming, while Byron intermittently composed poetry. In a letter to John Hobhouse, dated 23 August 1810 and written at the Capuchin monastery of Mendele near Athens where he was residing, Byron states: But my friend, as you may easily imagine, is Nicolo who by-the-by, is my Italian master, and we are already very philosophical. I am his "Padrone" and his "amico", and the Lord knows what besides.