Commentary Inf XXVIII 19-21

This image, suggesting layers of excavated battlefields, each containing vast areas of wounded soldiers holding out their mutilated limbs, gives us some sense of Dante's view of the end result of war, sheer human butchery. Bosco/Reggio (DDP Bosco.Inf.XXVIII.1-21) suggest that this bolgia brings into mind the image of a huge slaughterhouse.

For the Virgilian resonance (Aen. II.361-362) of these lines see, again, Tommaseo (DDP Tommaseo.Inf.XXVIII.19-21). This is Aeneas's response when he must tell the terrible carnage during the night of the fall of Troy.