Differences between the first age and the third age

[ZehnWaters]

Tolkien was musing about round world notions well before the MT texts. In my opinion the idea wasn't ultimately an attempt, nor ultimately a revision . . . as I think it ultimately became part of a multi-perspective legendarium, alongside flat-world notions.

My theory is that it was not to be part of the Quenta Silmarillion tradition, but part of the Fall of Numenor traditions (plural), for example.

I think I just like the idea that it was flat until Eru moved it into a different reality.

I still don't. really, Though much of Hostetter's NoMe seems to have that as a given (I've only read it once, so far). No, one part when he totally puffed up Melkor to - I'm woefully (or not) ignorant of the celluloid or magnetic tape or more recent electronic storage systems "mythologies" - a kind of Arda-Q (that strange "The Next Generation" guy portrayed by John de Lancie, to my limited memory of the series). When I read that, I was asking myself if someone had slipped JRRT some illegal "pipe-weed" lookalikes into the tobacco pouch he was using that day. More generally speaking, I was wondering if he was drifting towards Sci-Fi ...

Hm. Was this when he made Melkor more powerful than all of the other Ainur combined and he dispersed his essence through all of creation?

 

[Olorgando]

Hm. Was this when he made Melkor more powerful than all of the other Ainur combined and he dispersed his essence through all of creation?

Yup.

 

[ZehnWaters]

Yup.

Ah. I didn't mind that but I didn't read what Tolkien had actually written, only a summary. Though it's odd that Melkor would have been that much more powerful than literally ALL of his kin and then to diminish to someone less powerful than Sauron (jinkies, can you imagine how disorienting that would have been?). Still, the idea of him dispersing his essence throughout all of creation makes a lot of the story work a little better (it explains why there was so much destruction when the Ainur fought him and why they were so hesitant to do so again it would also explain how Sauron's ring could make him more powerful (he's essentially tapping into someone else's power).

 

[Alcuin]

Did [Elves] just stop having kids? The 2nd and 3rd Ages saw long stretches of peace yet the Noldor and Sindar seem to have had their numbers stagnate or decrease.

It rather sounds as if Elves had only one generation per age of Arda. The Valar fought and imprisoned Melkor to protect the Elves that Oromë discovered awakened in Cuiviénen. Melkor was imprisoned for three ages. Finwë was from Cuiviénen, and there seems to have been at least one generation of Elves before Finwë and Elwë (Elu Thingol), because I recall that Círdan is described as being related to Thingol. The Elves that agreed to go to Aman apparently hiked to Beleriand and from there were transported to Aman: that was apparently the first age of Melkor’s imprisonment.

Fëanor was born in Eldamar: that’s a second age of Melkor’s imprisonment, and Fëanor seems to have been one of the older children of his generation. (I have no citation for that: it’s my impression, not something I can prove.) Fëanor married and had children, and that’s the third age of Melkor’s imprisonment. After that, Melkor is released, cozens the Noldor, kills the Two Trees, raids Formenos, kills Finwë, steals the Silmarilli, and hies off for Angband. I think this period from Morgoth’s release and the First Age meld together into yet another age, because another generation of Elves (and Half-elves) are born: Gil-galad, Finduilas, Eärendil, Elwing, Elrond, Celebrían.

In the Third Age, Elrond and Celebrían have three children that live into the Fourth Age. So it isn’t that the Elves stopped having children, it’s just that they reproduced slowly in comparison with Dwarves, whose Third Age generations were about 100 years and who lived on average to about 250 years, and especially with Men. (Dúnedain (Númenóreans) are said to have lived on average three times longer than normal Men, 210 years at first, and their kings to about 400 years for the first 14 generations, so their population also grew more slowly than ours.)

In addition, large numbers of Elves emigrated from Middle-earth to Aman at the end of the First Age and in the Second and Third Ages, with increases in departures after the middle of Second Age with the War of the Elves and Sauron, and then again after the War of the Last Alliance at the end of the Second Age and the beginning of the Third Age. Gildor mentions it to Frodo: “We are Exiles, and most of our kindred have long ago departed and we too are now only tarrying here a while, ere we return over the Great Sea.” So between slow population growth, deaths in battle, and emigration, it would appear that almost all the Eldar (and perhaps some Elves not originally counted among the Eldar) had left Middle-earth by the time of the War of the Ring. Certainly none of the four major centers of remaining Elven power Tolkien mentions – Lindon, Rivendell, Lórien, or the Forest kingdom – could any longer project significant military power, though no doubt they remained tough defensively, as both Thranduil’s kingdom and Lórien proved during the War of the Ring.

[C]an someone explain the Ringwraiths to me in terms of power? They're clearly lesser than Balrogs, Dragons, and Sauron, yet they're treated as terrifying weapons in Sauron's hands.

In Letter 210 (complaining about the film proposal of Morton Grady Zimmerman, who was not, apparently a professional film writer), Tolkien wrote of the Nazgûl,

Their peril [i.e., the Ringwraiths’] is almost entirely due to the unreasoning fear which they inspire (like ghosts). They have no great physical power against the fearless; but what they have, and the fear that they inspire, is enormously increased in darkness. The Witch-king, their leader, is more powerful in all ways than the others…
​

The Witch-king was also able to break Frodo’s barrow-blade by uttering a spell while attempting to cross the Ford of Bruinen to attack him, and I think the Nazgûl in Bree had an effect upon the Ring that made it try to expose itself, as was revealed (or concealed) when Frodo fell from the table in The Prancing Pony. Later, the Witch-king spoke “in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend both heart and stone” (“Siege of Gondor”) so that

…the Gate of Gondor broke. As if stricken by some blasting spell it burst asunder: there was a flash of searing lightning, and the doors tumbled in riven fragments to the ground.
​

Gandalf described the Witch-king as a great “sorcerer,” and if he was, as seems certain, in life a great Númenórean lord, then he was also in life a great warrior and leader of Men as well. The same might be true of Khamûl the Black Easterling before his Ring of Power consumed him.

I think it's also fair to say that things in the 3rd and 4th Age are simply more mundane in their advancement. We don't see the creation, for instance, of anything like the Elessar or palantíri. While Andúril is reforged, we don't see the creation of any other legendary blades (like Anglachel, Anguirel, Glamdring, Orcrist, or even Sting). Even fancy new buildings seem to be the province of, at the latest, the first third of the 3rd Age. Beyond that we simply seen improvements or smaller scale building.

Tolkien describes the Third Age as a period of decay. The civilizations of the Elves, the Dwarves, and of the Dúnedain all decay during this period. Part of this, I believe, was the influence of the Three Rings of Power of the Elves. These were made to “preserv[e] the memory of the beauty of old, maintain[] enchanted enclaves of peace where Time seems to stand still and decay is restrained, a semblance of the bliss of the True West.” (From the long Letter 131 to Milton Waldman.) And in Letter 154, he wrote,

[T]he Elves are not wholly good or in the right. [W]ith or without [Sauron’s] assistance they were “embalmers”. They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle-earth because they had become fond of it (and perhaps because they there had the advantages of a superior caste), and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce, even largely a desert, where they could be “artists” – and they were overburdened with sadness and nostalgic regret. In their way the Men of Gondor were similar: a withering people whose only “hallows” were their tombs.
​

The remaining Dúnedain of Arnor might therefore have been different in this respect: They were beaten so low they were trying merely to survive and sustain some semblance of civilization at all, with the assistance of their Elven allies.

Sauron's forces increased in native power (Olog-Hai & Uruk-Hai). But even these breedings seem less...supernatural than the original creation of the Orcs and Trolls.

As for the Olog-hai (Black Speech, I suspect, for “great troll”), I have a strong suspicion Sauron developed them from Entwives. Notice the description of Treebeard when Merry and Pippin first meet him in Two Towers (“Treebeard”):

It belonged to a large Man-like, almost Troll-like, figure, at least fourteen foot high, very sturdy, with a tall head, and hardly any neck. Whether it was clad in stuff like green and grey bark, or whether that was its hide, was difficult to say.
​

Later Merry and Pippin described their attack upon Isengard (“Flotsam and Jetsam”):

A punch from an Ent-fist crumples up iron like thin tin.
​

Now compare those to the description of the Olog-hai in Return of the King:

[T]here came … a great company of hill-trolls out of Gorgoroth. Taller and broader than Men they were, and they were clad only in close-fitting mesh of horny scales, or maybe that was their hideous hide; … [T]hey … beat upon helm and head … as smiths hewing … hot … iron.
​

Nothing definitive, but suggestive, I think, of some relationship between the descriptions of Ents and “hill-trolls”, if these “hill-trolls” are, as I suspect, Olog-hai.

 

[Alcuin]

…Sauron's ring could make him more powerful (he's essentially tapping into someone else's power).

I think the Ruling Ring worked like malware in a computer: It allowed Sauron to see into the thoughts, minds, and motivations of the other wielders of the Rings of Power, and made them susceptible to his suggestions and promptings. Sauron had a rather overwhelming personality (and ego), enough to completely dominate a Man, and seeming enough to dominate an Elf, since the Smiths of Eregion removed the Rings of Power as soon as they became aware of Sauron’s betrayal. (Dwarves were not susceptible to Sauron’s dominion, nor apparently could Sauron see into their minds using these means, though he could inflame their greed and avarice.)

Whether or not he could “tap into someone else’s power” is not clear to me, though perhaps he could. What he could do, and did do to the Nazgûl, was completely dominate their wills. Galadriel indicated that if he regained his Ruling Ring, he could see into the minds of the keepers of the Three.

One thing the Ruling Ring definitely provided Sauron was a degree of indestructibility. When Númenor fell into the sea and Sauron’s first body was destroyed, he was able to regain a shape, though not an attractive one: more like a Balrog’s. (Tolkien was aware of the discrepancy of Sauron’s spirit carrying off the Ring, remaking in Letter 211 that “one need [not] boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended.”) When Isildur cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand and his “spirit fled,” leaving his body to disappear or burn up or be rolled into Orodruin or whatever fate befell it, even without possession of the Ring, its very existence allowed Sauron to regroup and remake a physical form.

I just like the idea that it was flat until Eru moved it into a different reality.

I concur.

"Myths Transformed" … is the absolute low point of JRRT's writing

Gee, I rather like it, particularly his musings upon Melkor Morgoth’s nihilism and Sauron’s increasing megalomania.

 

[1stvermont]

I'm still trying to figure this out. Did they just stop having kids? The 2nd and 3rd Ages saw long stretches of peace yet the Noldor and Sindar seem to have had their numbers stagnate or decrease.

Okay, can someone explain the Ringwraiths to me in terms of power? They're clearly lesser than Balrogs, Dragons, and Sauron, yet they're treated as terrifying weapons in Sauron's hands. I guess compared to Orcs and Trolls they're clearly more powerful and skilled but it still seems like a significant downgrade from what Melkor had.

I think it's also fair to say that things in the 3rd and 4th Age are simply more mundane in their advancement. We don't see the creation, for instance, of anything like the Elessar or palantíri. While Andúril is reforged, we don't see the creation of any other legendary blades (like Anglachel, Anguirel, Glamdring, Orcrist, or even Sting). Even fancy new buildings seem to be the province of, at the latest, the first third of the 3rd Age. Beyond that we simply seen improvements or smaller scale building.

Power, control, and numbers seem to be just as large or larger, however. Skill of the people fighting, HOW they fight. Sauron's forces increased in native power (Olog-Hai & Uruk-Hai). But even these breedings seem less...supernatural than the original creation of the Orcs and Trolls.

Elves had few kids and lost many due to war and those returning to the west.

Durin's Bane was not under Saurons control and yes a balrog or large dragon was more powerful than a Ringwraith. I agree the strength or Morgoth's armies was in having dragons and balrogs [how many?] but I would argue it seems everything else was improved over time under Sauron. But i was just mentioning the ringwraiths as one example of third age power increase.


I would say the rings of power were an advancement. Along with various siege equipment, Galadriel's mirror, dwarves improved armour, breeding of orcs, mumakil, Nazgul, there were improvements to fort etc. But the early crafts passed down so were available to the later ages, plus the new editions over time that was created or improved. So for example, while Fenor was not creating Palantir anymore, they were used in later ages.

 

[ZehnWaters]

Elves had few kids and lost many due to war and those returning to the west.

I guess they're just slow reproducers. They need to start channeling Fëanor and Nerdanel in that regard.

Durin's Bane was not under Saurons control and yes a balrog or large dragon was more powerful than a Ringwraith. I agree the strength or Morgoth's armies was in having dragons and balrogs [how many?] but I would argue it seems everything else was improved over time under Sauron. But i was just mentioning the ringwraiths as one example of third age power increase.

I just...I'm having a hard time quantifying their power. Saruman and Radagast were petrified of them. Gandalf THE WHITE admits he doesn't know if the Witch-King is greater than him (my dude, you killed a BALROG!). Yet The Witch-King fled from Glorfindel. So I'm just not sure how to place them.

I would say the rings of power were an advancement. Along with various siege equipment, Galadriel's mirror, dwarves improved armour, breeding of orcs, mumakil, Nazgul, there were improvements to fort etc. But the early crafts passed down so were available to the later ages, plus the new editions over time that was created or improved. So for example, while Fenor was not creating Palantir anymore, they were used in later ages.

Yeah. I guess some of the advancements just seem more mundane. Or maybe just fewer.

It rather sounds as if Elves had only one generation per age of Arda. The Valar fought and imprisoned Melkor to protect the Elves that Oromë discovered awakened in Cuiviénen. Melkor was imprisoned for three ages. Finwë was from Cuiviénen, and there seems to have been at least one generation of Elves before Finwë and Elwë (Elu Thingol), because I recall that Círdan is described as being related to Thingol.

Tolkien fluctuated heavily on this in NoME. The could have been the grandsons to Imin, Tata, and Enel or their very distant descendants (with Ingwë being of the one generation higher).

In the Third Age, Elrond and Celebrían have three children that live into the Fourth Age. So it isn’t that the Elves stopped having children, it’s just that they reproduced slowly in comparison with Dwarves, whose Third Age generations were about 100 years and who lived on average to about 250 years, and especially with Men. (Dúnedain (Númenóreans) are said to have lived on average three times longer than normal Men, 210 years at first, and their kings to about 400 years for the first 14 generations, so their population also grew more slowly than ours.)

I guess that makes sense. It's just...odd since the Second and Third Ages last over 6000 years. You'd think at least a couple of generations would get born. I just like elves and want more of them.

Certainly none of the four major centers of remaining Elven power Tolkien mentions – Lindon, Rivendell, Lórien, or the Forest kingdom – could any longer project significant military power, though no doubt they remained tough defensively, as both Thranduil’s kingdom and Lórien proved during the War of the Ring.

I am curious, just how large and populated WAS Lindon in the Third Age? It seems to have been VERY powerful in the Second Age (since that's where ALL of the remaining Noldor went) but in the Third Age the non-Silvan elves have largely retreated to VERY small population centers.

Later, the Witch-king spoke “in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend both heart and stone”

Not to get off topic but I actually had a nightmare where a floating head did this. It was entirely terrifying. Took me a couple of hours to recover.

In Letter 210 (complaining about the film proposal of Morton Grady Zimmerman, who was not, apparently a professional film writer), Tolkien wrote of the Nazgûl,

​

Their peril [i.e., the Ringwraiths’] is almost entirely due to the unreasoning fear which they inspire (like ghosts). They have no great physical power against the fearless; but what they have, and the fear that they inspire, is enormously increased in darkness. The Witch-king, their leader, is more powerful in all ways than the others…​

​

The Witch-king was also able to break Frodo’s barrow-blade by uttering a spell while attempting to cross the Ford of Bruinen to attack him, and I think the Nazgûl in Bree had an effect upon the Ring that made it try to expose itself, as was revealed (or concealed) when Frodo fell from the table in The Prancing Pony.
(“Siege of Gondor”) so that

​

…the Gate of Gondor broke. As if stricken by some blasting spell it burst asunder: there was a flash of searing lightning, and the doors tumbled in riven fragments to the ground.​

​

Gandalf described the Witch-king as a great “sorcerer,” and if he was, as seems certain, in life a great Númenórean lord, then he was also in life a great warrior and leader of Men as well. The same might be true of Khamûl the Black Easterling before his Ring of Power consumed him.

So the Witch-King was roughly on par with an Istar. I can handle that quantification.

Tolkien describes the Third Age as a period of decay. The civilizations of the Elves, the Dwarves, and of the Dúnedain all decay during this period.

Hm. So the 4th age might have been one of recovery (like the Second Age had been). I can get behind that.

Part of this, I believe, was the influence of the Three Rings of Power of the Elves. These were made to “preserv[e] the memory of the beauty of old, maintain[] enchanted enclaves of peace where Time seems to stand still and decay is restrained, a semblance of the bliss of the True West.” (From the long Letter 131 to Milton Waldman.) And in Letter 154, he wrote,

A concept I can definitely understand.

As for the Olog-hai (Black Speech, I suspect, for “great troll”), I have a strong suspicion Sauron developed them from Entwives. Notice the description of Treebeard when Merry and Pippin first meet him in Two Towers (“Treebeard”):​

Nothing definitive, but suggestive, I think, of some relationship between the descriptions of Ents and “hill-trolls”, if these “hill-trolls” are, as I suspect, Olog-hai.​

It's certainly an idea. It would make sense and matches well with my theory of how the orcs were made via breeding with Maiaric Boldogs.

I think the Ruling Ring worked like malware in a computer: I

That's similar to how I've analogized it. It works on the same computer code, which is why he could hack into the Three despite having never touched them.

Whether or not he could “tap into someone else’s power” is not clear to me, though perhaps he could.

Oh, I was unclear. I mostly meant he likely could use it to tap into that latent corruption Melkor left in every particle of the world. Because that corruption wasn't HIS power it meant he wasn't disseminating himself, he was tapping into a resource that was already there.

Gee, I rather like it, particularly his musings upon Melkor Morgoth’s nihilism and Sauron’s increasing megalomania.

It's a mixed bag. I like a lot of it but the attempt to rewrite the history was defintely something I DIDN'T like.

 

[1stvermont]

I guess they're just slow reproducers. They need to start channeling Fëanor and Nerdanel in that regard.

I just...I'm having a hard time quantifying their power. Saruman and Radagast were petrified of them. Gandalf THE WHITE admits he doesn't know if the Witch-King is greater than him (my dude, you killed a BALROG!). Yet The Witch-King fled from Glorfindel. So I'm just not sure how to place them.

Yeah. I guess some of the advancements just seem more mundane. Or maybe just fewer.

In The nature of ME Tolkien really goes into detail on the reproduction of the elves. I would suggest getting it for this reason. I have read it but did not take notes. Perhaps I will get a bit of time and could summarize what he wrote for you.


Yes i agree, it is a bit confusing. I would say Gandalf was not sure of himself vs the balrog either. I think however the witch king was given a bit extra strength by Sauron before the attack on Minas Tirith but I could be wrong on that. Also, I would say Gandalf's power was like Elrond in wisdom. Not that his "power" was not an ability to fight 1v1 as he showed, but power can have many meanings in Tolkien world. Also, Glorfindel was a bad as@ who also killed a balrog and his power was in fighting. The peoples of ME indicates that when he returned after his death he reached the power of a maiar.

 

[ZehnWaters]

In The nature of ME Tolkien really goes into detail on the reproduction of the elves. I would suggest getting it for this reason. I have read it but did not take notes. Perhaps I will get a bit of time and could summarize what he wrote for you.

Ooof. I've skimmed it. Lots of mathematical equations.

Yes i agree, it is a bit confusing. I would say Gandalf was not sure of himself vs the balrog either. I think however the witch king was given a bit extra strength by Sauron before the attack on Minas Tirith but I could be wrong on that. Also, I would say Gandalf's power was like Elrond in wisdom. Not that his "power" was not an ability to fight 1v1 as he showed, but power can have many meanings in Tolkien world. Also, Glorfindel was a bad as@ who also killed a balrog and his power was in fighting. The peoples of ME indicates that when he returned after his death he reached the power of a maiar.

Ah, fair.

 

[Olorgando]

In The nature of ME Tolkien really goes into detail on the reproduction of the elves. I would suggest getting it for this reason. I have read it but did not take notes. Perhaps I will get a bit of time and could summarize what he wrote for you.

Ooof. I've skimmed it. Lots of mathematical equations.

JRRT once confessed, in a letter, to being a "natural niggler".
That whole "Part One: Time and Ageing" (about 165 pages) sure proves that with a vengeance! 😵

Now we know JRRT almost never threw anything away, but if he had been prone to crumpling a sheet of paper with writing that he felt inadequate, and throwing it behind him onto a mounting pile ...

... the writing of Part One was spread over several years; If I were to imagine JRRT to have gone at it all in one sitting - that pile of crumpled paper behind him would have resembled a pyramid (with round base) perhaps six feet high (or more), and same at the diameter of the base ... 🥴

 

[Hisoka Morrow]

Yes i agree, it is a bit confusing. I would say Gandalf was not sure of himself vs the balrog either. I think however the witch king was given a bit extra strength by Sauron before the attack on Minas Tirith but I could be wrong on that. Also, I would say Gandalf's power was like Elrond in wisdom. Not that his "power" was not an ability to fight 1v1 as he showed, but power can have many meanings in Tolkien world. Also, Glorfindel was a bad as@ who also killed a balrog and his power was in fighting. The peoples of ME indicates that when he returned after his death he reached the power of a maiar.

Totally agreed, ways to show power had multiple ways, even combat records might be due to not only physical strength but intelligence and blood-thrust as well. Such as Pippin's record of killing trolls, and even Balrog's suicide attack VS Gandalf.