Our national poet Dionysios Solomos was born on 8 April 1798 in Zakynthos, the illegitimate child of the late Nikolaos Solomos and his servant Angeliki Niklis.
At a very young age he was orphaned and in 1808 he left to study in Italy, accompanied by his Italian teacher Rossi. Seven years later he was graduated from the Lyceum of Cremona and enrolled at the University of Pavia, where he obtained a degree in law. While studying law, in which he was never interested, he began to write verses in Italian, and came into contact with eminent philosophers, philologists and notable representatives of the literary movement of the time.
In 1818 he returned to Zakynthos, where he stayed for ten years. There he began to write his first remarkable verse in Greek. His first extensive Greek poem and the best known is the Hymn to Freedom, an excerpt of which was established as our National Anthem. Shortly afterwards, he composed the lyric poem To the Death of Lord Byron, followed by The Catastrophe of Psara, The Pharmakomeni, Lambros, To the Lonely, The Cretan, The Free Besieged, The Porphyry.
At the end of 1828 he settled permanently in Corfu, continuing his occupation with poetry almost in isolation.
At the end of 1828 he settled permanently in Corfu, continuing his occupation with poetry almost in isolation. He did not make a single trip to liberated Greece, because, as it is claimed, "he did not seek to show off in his national spirit but in the holy step of the soul".
On 3 February 1849 he was awarded the Golden Cross of the Saviour, because "with his poetry he aroused the feelings of the people in the struggle for national independence."
He died on 9 February 1857 in Corfu, after repeated cerebral congestion. His remains were transferred in 1865 to Zakynthos and were initially placed in a small mausoleum in the grave of Kalvos.
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