7 ms·

Hmm, all of the old powerful things come from the past. Good and bad. Sauron for example. But if the "era of men" has come, as the elves say, perhaps the Middle

Hmm, all of the old powerful things come from the past. Good and bad. Sauron for example. But if the "era of men" has come, as the elves say, perhaps the Middle Earth dwellers are doing something ok? I suppose the Middle Earth in Frodo's times are a reflection of early medieval times. And to some extent that's how it was. Collapse of Western Roman empire was a time of terrible economic downturn.

sigmoid10 4y ago
Yeah, we never really got to see the third age at its prime. We just know that the rise of Gondor came with a millennia of peace and prosperity for the west before things stalled. In the same way the period just before and after the collapse of Rome was not the best, but that doesn't mean it was worse than ancient civilisations at its peak.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  The Third Age was roughly 1000 years of growth followed by 2000 years of war and decline. In some of Tolkien's writings, you can clearly find the idea of immortals fighting the long war that slowly wore the Numenoreans down over the millennia.
  - sigmoid10 4y ago
    Nonetheless, the immortals (including Ilúvatar, but mostly their underlings) messing with the world was a lot more prevalent in the first and second age. The third age was kind of a transition to the age of men, which finally came by in the fourth. So for humans progress was definitely positive overall if you don't just look at the cataclysms.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> But if the "era of men" has come, as the elves say, perhaps the Middle Earth dwellers are doing something ok? It's more a question of the elves spontaneously losing the will to live.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Losing the will to live != deciding it was time to leave (die)
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Tolkien's cosmology is clear that, by the time of The Lord of the Rings, elves are not able to live outside Valinor. If they leave the protected enclaves created by the rings of power (Elrond maintains Rivendell by using Vilya; Galadriel maintains Lothlorien by using Nenya), they will be overcome by ennui and "die".[1] Elves do not physically die, but they will enter comas and their souls will appear in the house of one of the Valar. The Silmarillion records this happening to one elf whose comatose body is maintained (but unresponsive) while their soul can be visited and conversed with. [1] This fails to explain how the Mirkwood elves can live there. But the answer appears to be that they can't, since they leave along with the other elves.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      Original phrasing implied a sort of depressed suicide. In a figurative sense not the in world mechanics
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        That seems... accurate? The elves leave Middle-Earth because, when they stay in Middle-Earth, they are prone to spontaneously dying because they just can't bear to deal with being alive. "Losing the will to live" is a literal description of what happens to them, but "depressed suicide" isn't far off.
evol262 4y ago
The Western empire ended with a whisper, not a bang. The estate system was already firmly in place, Diocletian's reforms were the foundation of feudalism, "nations on the march" (Franks, Vandals, Goths) had long ago settled in the empire en-masse. The fall of the West was changing the name on the door. Theodoric could have been a western emperor for all intents and purposes. Even the institutions remained pretty much unchanged. The only real distress was that the loss of Northern Africa as the breadbasket for Rome meant that Rome itself continued to shrink/decline (a process which had been underway for a long time by the end), and that was only because of the lack of a grain dole, which had been in place for 500ish years anyway, because even the late Republic had significant problems with wealth inequality. If you want to talk about economic downturns, currency devaluation after mining all of the silver in Iberia, the crisis of third century, independent administration of the East and concentration of the wealth of Egypt/Syria into Constantinople, and the amount of wealth which went into keeping up auxillia/mercenaries are better targets, and those all long predate the fall of the west.
- Balero 4y ago
  This is only true for mid/southern Gaul, Iberia, and Rome, and to a lesser extent to the North of Gaul. To Briton the Western Roman empire fell hard. There was a marked collapse of urban life, a shut down to bulk trade networks which were relied on for a great amount of the economic activity. Students were no longer sent to "Rome" (or the other metropolitan areas) for education. And worst of all the Roman Military left. This led to a complete collapse of the system, people went back to sustenance living with the drop in living quality that this, suffered raids from the Picts, Irish and Germanic people's. There was a huge power vacuum that led to local 'warlords' rising in power and a politically fractured island. This also led to the Anglo-Saxon invasion. It is from the perspective of (comparatively) modern scholars that we get the story of the "Collapse of the Roman Empire" because from the perspective of the British isles is was a collapse.
  - wintermutestwin 4y ago
    This is a very well done podcast on the fall of Roman Britain: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-one-of-fall-of-civilizations-is-now-live/ https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-on...

sigmoid10 4y ago

Yeah, we never really got to see the third age at its prime. We just know that the rise of Gondor came with a millennia of peace and prosperity for the west before things stalled. In the same way the period just before and after the collapse of Rome was not the best, but that doesn't mean it was worse than ancient civilisations at its peak.

jltsiren 4y ago
The Third Age was roughly 1000 years of growth followed by 2000 years of war and decline. In some of Tolkien's writings, you can clearly find the idea of immortals fighting the long war that slowly wore the Numenoreans down over the millennia.
- sigmoid10 4y ago
  Nonetheless, the immortals (including Ilúvatar, but mostly their underlings) messing with the world was a lot more prevalent in the first and second age. The third age was kind of a transition to the age of men, which finally came by in the fourth. So for humans progress was definitely positive overall if you don't just look at the cataclysms.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> But if the "era of men" has come, as the elves say, perhaps the Middle Earth dwellers are doing something ok? It's more a question of the elves spontaneously losing the will to live.

oneoff786 4y ago
Losing the will to live != deciding it was time to leave (die)
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Tolkien's cosmology is clear that, by the time of The Lord of the Rings, elves are not able to live outside Valinor. If they leave the protected enclaves created by the rings of power (Elrond maintains Rivendell by using Vilya; Galadriel maintains Lothlorien by using Nenya), they will be overcome by ennui and "die".[1] Elves do not physically die, but they will enter comas and their souls will appear in the house of one of the Valar. The Silmarillion records this happening to one elf whose comatose body is maintained (but unresponsive) while their soul can be visited and conversed with. [1] This fails to explain how the Mirkwood elves can live there. But the answer appears to be that they can't, since they leave along with the other elves.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Original phrasing implied a sort of depressed suicide. In a figurative sense not the in world mechanics
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      That seems... accurate? The elves leave Middle-Earth because, when they stay in Middle-Earth, they are prone to spontaneously dying because they just can't bear to deal with being alive. "Losing the will to live" is a literal description of what happens to them, but "depressed suicide" isn't far off.

evol262 4y ago

The Western empire ended with a whisper, not a bang. The estate system was already firmly in place, Diocletian's reforms were the foundation of feudalism, "nations on the march" (Franks, Vandals, Goths) had long ago settled in the empire en-masse. The fall of the West was changing the name on the door. Theodoric could have been a western emperor for all intents and purposes. Even the institutions remained pretty much unchanged. The only real distress was that the loss of Northern Africa as the breadbasket for Rome meant that Rome itself continued to shrink/decline (a process which had been underway for a long time by the end), and that was only because of the lack of a grain dole, which had been in place for 500ish years anyway, because even the late Republic had significant problems with wealth inequality. If you want to talk about economic downturns, currency devaluation after mining all of the silver in Iberia, the crisis of third century, independent administration of the East and concentration of the wealth of Egypt/Syria into Constantinople, and the amount of wealth which went into keeping up auxillia/mercenaries are better targets, and those all long predate the fall of the west.

Balero 4y ago
This is only true for mid/southern Gaul, Iberia, and Rome, and to a lesser extent to the North of Gaul. To Briton the Western Roman empire fell hard. There was a marked collapse of urban life, a shut down to bulk trade networks which were relied on for a great amount of the economic activity. Students were no longer sent to "Rome" (or the other metropolitan areas) for education. And worst of all the Roman Military left. This led to a complete collapse of the system, people went back to sustenance living with the drop in living quality that this, suffered raids from the Picts, Irish and Germanic people's. There was a huge power vacuum that led to local 'warlords' rising in power and a politically fractured island. This also led to the Anglo-Saxon invasion. It is from the perspective of (comparatively) modern scholars that we get the story of the "Collapse of the Roman Empire" because from the perspective of the British isles is was a collapse.
- wintermutestwin 4y ago
  This is a very well done podcast on the fall of Roman Britain: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-one-of-fall-of-civilizations-is-now-live/ https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-on...