Quote checked against the text
“Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower.” — attributed to Epictetus
Yes. The sentence is in the text, at Discourses, “Of the things which are in our power and not in our power”; George Long’s 1877 edition is quoted below.
Yes, and almost to the comma. Long’s 1877 selection prints the chapter under his own title, “Of the things which are in our power and not in our power”, and it carries the exchange: “But I will put you in chains. Man, what are you talking about? Me, in chains? You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower.” The circulating version drops two commas and adds one.
The lines belong to a rehearsal. Epictetus asks what a man should have in readiness: what is mine and what is not, what is permitted to me and what is not. Then he plays both parts, the tyrant and the philosopher: I will throw you into prison, my poor body, you mean; I will cut your head off, when have I told you that my head alone cannot be cut off. These, he says, are the things philosophers should meditate on and write daily.
So the verdict is attested. Long’s 1877 selection prints no book or chapter numbers, so the passage is cited by his chapter title; it stands in the first discourse he kept, and Courdaveaux’s French edition numbers the same chapter Entretiens, I, 1.
What we searched
Each fragment is searched, normalized, in every file of the editions below. The block is the search and its result, replayed at each build.
The wording was searched in Carter 1758 (Enchiridion, 52 chapters) and Long 1877 (a selection of the Discourses, without book or chapter numbers, plus the Enchiridion).
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang en --author epictete "fetter my leg" "not even Zeus himself can overpower"
Elizabeth Carter, 1758 — Enchiridion · 52 chapters (Carter’s numbering) (1 file)
"fetter my leg" 0 hits
"not even Zeus himself can overpower" 0 hits
George Long, 1877 — Discourses (selection) and Enchiridion · a selection of the Discourses, without book or chapter numbers, plus the Enchiridion (1 file)
"fetter my leg" 1 hit
l. 180 …chains? You may fetter my leg, but
"not even Zeus himself can overpower" 1 hit
l. 181 my will not even Zeus himself can overpower. I will…
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang fr --author epictete "enchaîner ma jambe" "Zeus lui-même" "enchaîneras ma cuisse"
Jean-Marie Guyau, 1875 — Manuel · 53 chapters (modern numbering) (1 file)
"enchaîner ma jambe" 0 hits
"Zeus lui-même" 0 hits
"enchaîneras ma cuisse" 0 hits
Victor Courdaveaux, 1862 — Entretiens · 9 chapters of the Discourses (I, 1 · I, 15 · I, 18 · I, 24 · I, 25 · II, 13 · II, 18 · III, 16 · III, 24) (9 files)
"enchaîner ma jambe" 0 hits
"Zeus lui-même" 0 hits
"enchaîneras ma cuisse" 1 hit
entretiens-I-01.txt l. 17 …moi ! tu enchaîneras ma cuisse ; mais ma…This sentence appears 2 times in the list of circulating quotes we collected on 2026-08-09.
What the text says
Man, what are you talking about? Me, in chains? You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower.
How to cite
The passage, in the edition quoted above:
Epictetus, Discourses, “Of the things which are in our power and not in our power” (trans. George Long, 1877)
Other sentences checked
All sentences attributed to EpictetusAll quote checks
Every passage in Stoïque carries its reference. The 39 passages of Epictetus are in Stoic+, each with its locator.