Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

"Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" is a quotation from Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" of January 1735.

It alludes to "breaking on the wheel", a form of torture in which victims had their long bones broken by an iron bar while tied to a Catherine wheel. The quotation is used to suggest someone is "[employing] superabundant effort in the accomplishment of a small matter". The quotation is sometimes misquoted with "on" in place of "upon".

The line appears in a section criticizing the courtier John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, who was close to Queen Caroline and was one of Pope's bitterest enemies. The section also refers to accusations of homosexuality against Hervey. They were originally made in William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath's Proper reply to a late scurrilous libel of 1731, which had led to Hervey challenging Pulteney to a duel. Hervey's decade-long clandestine affair with Stephen Fox would eventually contribute to his downfall. Despite Pope's claims, Hervey should not be considered homosexual, as he was known to be bisexual.

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