The higher impact of Ruden's fewer, simpler (and often more apt) words is thrilling - especially in the battle scenes. She captures both the explosiveness and the pathos in the great battle in Book 10:

The spearhead, striking, shaking, pounded through
The shield - all of the bronze and iron sheets,
All of the bull-hide layers wrapping it -
Into the breastplate, into that strong chest.
Out of the wound he tore the heated shaft,
But with it came his lifeblood and his soul.

The concise style also preserves the tension that can peter out with a longer line. These lines from Book 2 describe night falling for the last time on the city of Troy: 

The heavens swung round, night leaped from the ocean
To wrap the earth and sky - and Greek deceit - 
In its great shadow.

They compare favourably with Fagles's slightly over-ornamented attempt to mimic the sounds and rhythm of the Latin:

... But all the while
the skies keep wheeling on and night comes sweeping in
from the Ocean Stream, in its mammoth shadow swallowing up
the earth, and the Pole Star, and the treachery of the Greeks.