One critic writes:

[he] seems to treat his readers as horses at a certain stage of their decline are treated by experienced drivers, who keep them going from fear that if they let them stop or slacken they will be unable to get up their pace again. He never unbends his bow. But a table-land may be as flat, and even wearisome, as a plain; and the ornaments in [his] Aeneid frequently are not, and indeed cannot be, more ornamental than the passages which they purport to embellish.

This would seem to bode poorly for Robert Fagles, the latest person to undertake a full-scale translation of the Aeneid.