23 NOVEMBER 1912, Page 17

HUNGER-STRIKING IN THE SECOND CENTURY.

[To TEE EDITOR or THR "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your correspondent " X. Y. Z." (Spectator, Novem- ber 9th, 1912) finds an instance of a hunger-strike in the seventeenth century, but has overlooked one fifteen (or at least fourteen) centuries earlier. In the Oxyrbynchus Papyri, recently discovered, there is a letter from a bad boy to his father. The boy wants to go to Alexandria with his father. The father has managed, by some ruse, to get away without him. The boy sends a most petulant letter to his father, of which the climax is : 8r td wialpas oL µt eScf-yat oL IA retro,. TaCi-a. "If you don't send for me I won't eat and I won't drink. I mean it." The translation is mine, but the grammar and spelling are his own.—I am, Sir, Ste.,