Lineages
Every great book stands on older ones. Homer gave Virgil his wanderings and his war; Virgil walked Dante through Hell. Start from a classic and follow its line, one work at a time, across the map.
Its heirs
T. S. Eliot, AD 1922
'I had not thought death had undone so many', Eliot's line for the crowds crossing London Bridge, comes from Dante; and behind Dante stands the messenger in Aeschylus' Persians, reporting that never had so many men died in a single day.
Source: Wikipedia, The Persians
“Eliot, in The Waste Land, "The Burial of the Dead", line 63 "I had not thought Death had undone so many" echoed line 432 of the Messenger account in The Persians: "However, you can be sure that so great a multitude of men never perished in a single day", which is also similar to Dante's line in Inferno, Canto III, lines 56–57: ch'i' non averei creduto/Che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta.” Read it there