What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.

Byron contrasts human social euphemism (“gallantry”) with a stricter moral or divine judgment (“adultery”), exposing how language can sanitize sexual transgression. The couplet also invokes a common early‑nineteenth‑century notion that climate influences temperament and behavior: in “sultry” regions, passion is imagined as more readily inflamed and social restraints looser. Read satirically, the lines mock both the self-serving rhetoric of polite society and the pseudo-scientific habit of explaining moral choices through geography. The wit lies in the neat antithesis—men rename what gods condemn—while the rhyme turns the observation into a memorable epigram.