So long a train of people
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e dietro le venìa sì lunga tratta di gente, ch’ i’ non averei creduto che morte tanta n’ avesse disfatta.
and behind it came so long a file of people that I would never have believed death had undone so many.
Behind the banner streams a file of people so long that Dante would not have believed death had undone so many.
The line of souls has no visible end. <i>Sì lunga tratta di gente</i> — so long a train — that the number itself becomes the horror. It is not one wasted life but a multitude, more than Dante thought the whole of death had ever claimed.
<i>Che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta</i>: this line will echo four centuries later in T. S. Eliot's crowd flowing over London Bridge, "I had not thought death had undone so many." The neutrals are the largest company in Hell precisely because indifference is the commonest failure. Most people, Dante suggests, live and die without ever choosing.
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Inferno 3.55 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/3.55/