# Gondor as Byzantine Empire and other parallels



## Aldarion

Moved reply from this thread to avoid off-topicing much...



Merroe said:


> I am more surprised each time with your ever-reiterating Byzantine stuff.
> In these parts we discuss literature facts, not fanfic.
> 
> You have been challenged several times before. about your sources of that Byzantine _idée-fixe_ of yours.
> Where did JRRT confirm that???
> 
> Pls beware that, by proposing nonsense for facts in this TTF forum area, you are not only confusing prospective readers; you are also undermining the credibility of this site.
> 
> *Give us your exact references where JRRT confirmed Gondor=Byzantine.*



It is not fanfic. I do not explain it in detail before because, frankly, it should be obvious to anyone who has even superficial knowledge of Gondor's and Byzantine history both. If nobody here understands relation and similarities of Byzantium and Gondor, then this site does not have that much credibility to be undermined to begin with. (Sorry if tone of response seems aggressive, but what you wrote is basically combination of personal attack and emotional blackmail). And no, Gondor is not _just_ Byzantine Empire - it also has influences of Holy Roman Empire and ancient Egypt - but parallels with Byzantine Empire are the most obvious - though this might simply be due to me having more knowledge about Byzantine Empire than about ancient Egypt (or HRE, for that matter).

First, we have Tolkien's own statements that Gondor is analogous to the Byzantine Empire:
_"In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium."
"Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith"_

Tolkien has also located Minas Tirith at latitude of Florence. This latitude (43,77) is similar though not exactly the same to that of Constantinople (41,01) and Rome (41,9).

Second, we have history of Arnor and Gondor:
1) Arnor and Gondor were formed by survivors of disaster - Elendil, Isildur and Anarion. Rome was likewise founded by survivors of a disaster - Eneas, Romulus and Remus.
2) Arnor and Gondor were technically under one crown, with king of Arnor being superior to king of Gondor, but in practice they acted as separate states. This is exact same situation as Roman Empire post-395 (and even earlier), where Emperor of Western Empire was (typically but not always) the senior _Augustus_ and technically ruled both halves of the Empire, but in practice the Eastern Empire - being more powerful - did as it pleased. Similarly, it is clear that Gondor quite quickly outstrips Arnor in terms of political and military power, despite former being technically a "senior" kingdom.
3) Arnor was politically "superior" as seat of Elendil, but Gondor was economically, demographically and militarily stronger - much like Western Roman Empire had distinction of containing Rome, but was in all other aspects (demography, economy, military) inferior to Eastern Roman Empire.
4) Western Roman Empire was lost to conquest from the North (Germans), and Arnor was lost to conquest from the North (Angmar).
5) Arnor splits into three kingdoms, much like Frankish Empire - which claimed descent from Western Roman Empire - did.
6) Gondor keeps going on for much longer than Arnor (WRE - ERE).
7) Arvediu attempted to gain throne of Gondor, but was rejected by the Dunedian who gave crown to Earnil. Similarly, when Charlemagne offered to marry Empress Irene, thus uniting both empires under the same ruler, Byzantines rejected not just the marriage but Irene as well (she was already deeply unpopular). Later, Otto I. also tried to unite Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire, by offering a marriage of his son Otto II. to Byzantine princess, but this was again rejected.
8) In a last-ditch effort to save Arnor, Gondor sends a naval expedition - which fails at fulfilling the goal. This is roughly similar to Byzantine expedition aimed at saving North Africa to Empire (launched under Theodosius III) which was a failure, albeit for different reasons.
9) During height of its power, Gondor conquers areas of Rhun and Harad for a short while. Roman Empire had conquered Mesopotamia for a short while under Trajan (even names are similar - Turambar / Trajan, though it could be a coincidence).
10) Many of the enemies which threatened Gondor were eastern nomads - Wainriders, Balchoth etc. - which were noted for usage of wagons and chariots. Similarly, Eastern Roman Empire was threatened by numerous nomads, some of which also relied heavily on wagons. Pechenegs used wagons in a laager, and Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD was lost partly because of Gothic use of wagon fort.
11) King Eldacar managed to win back the throne with help of Northmen. Similarly, Basil II kept his throne thanks to the alliance with Prince Vladimir of Kiev.
12) Gondor declined thanks to Kin-Strife, constant warfare and the plague. Byzantine Empire also declined thanks to these factors - it was Justinian's Plague and recurrent occurences of the disease which first caused the loss of Justinian's reconquest, but also the subsequent inability to defend against Arab expansion. Later 14th century decline from which the Empire never recovered was also caused by plague.
13) Gondor lost its largest harbour (Umbar) thanks to Dark Numenoreans, but permanent loss was only due to Men of Harad. Likewise, Byzantium lost its largest harbour (Alexandria) several times thanks to various rebellions (and then Persians), but the final loss was to Arabs.
14) Constantine XI remained in foklore as "marble king" whose return would signal resurrection of the Empire. Return of Aragorn signals resurrection of United Kingdom of Arnor and Gondor.

Third, there is sociopolitical organization:
1) We have literally no evidence of subinfeudation. All "fiefs" are of roughly similar size, and all lords only rule these fiefs. No lord is superior to another, but all of them answer to the Steward at Minas Tirith. This organization is essentially identical to Byzantine thematic system with elements of Anglo-Saxon fyrd, rather than anything which could be described as "feudal". See here and here.
2) Imrahil is commander of forces of Belfalas, but he himself is Lord of Dol Amroth. There is no direct connection between the two as in feudal system.
3) Unlike feudal system, Gondor is highly centralized - to the point that fall of Minas Tirith is generally understood to also mean the fall of Gondor, and City is often equalized with Gondor as such. Byzantine Empire after 7th century was centered on Constantinople, the only major urban centre remaining within the Empire (there were a few other cities, but none anywhere as significant as pre-Conquest Alexandria, Carthage, Antioch). When Constantinople fell in 1203. and again in 1204., the Empire fractured, with occupied Latin Empire as well as Byzantine-controlled Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond. Empire of Nicaea managed to reconquer Constantinople, but Epirus and Trebizond both remained independent.

Fourth, there is strategic and physical geography:
1) Gondor controls pass over Anduin at Osgilliath, and thus is a main target of attack. This is basically the situation of Constantinople during existence of the Empire, and later, Belgrade and Budapest during Hungarian-Ottoman and Habsburg-Ottoman wars. Byzantine Empire essentially controlled land route into southeastern Europe from Near East, which made it a target of conquerors during its entire existence.
2) Gondor defends realms of men against threats coming out of the East and South, whereas Arnor defends them against threat from North (Angmar). This is similar to how Byzantine Empire defended Europe against threats from the East (Arabs, Turks) and South (Arabs) while Frankish Empire defended Europe and Mediterranean against threats from the West (technically southwest - Arabs) and North (Vikings, Germans).
3) Eastern borders of Gondor are defined by the mountains (Ephel Duath) and then retreat to the river (Anduin). This again is similar to both Byzantine Empire (Taurus-Antitaurus > retreat to Bosphorus and Dardanelles after Manzikert) and Hungary (Carpathian Mountains > retreat to Danube and beyond after Mohacs). Unlike Byzantium, new border is a river, but unlike Hungary, said border is more-or-less permanent (whereas Hungary to west of Danube was quickly conquered after Battle of Mohacs, and new border was defined by hills, marshes and forrests as opposed to a river).
4) Strategic importance of Minas Tirith as well as its layered defences are clear parallel to Constantinople. Minas Tirith has seven walls + the Rammas Echor. Rammas Echor is a clear analogue to Constantinople's Anastasian Walls. Also, Constantinople will have had seven layers of defences if all the walls had survived:

The Long Wall.
The Theodosian Wall(s).
The Wall of Constantine.
The Severan Wall of New Byzantium.
the Wall of Old Byzantium.
The outer wall of the Great Palace.
The wall around the inner part of the Great Palace.
5) Rome and Constantinople were both built on seven hills, where Minas Tirith has seven concentric walls on a single hill. Though, its circular shape is likely inspired by Plato's description of Atlantis.
6) On the other hand, Constantinople's physical geography and its location on a crucial waterway is paralleled better by Osgilliath. There is also the fact that dome of Osgilliath is given importance (Hagia Sophia?).
7) Minas Tirith is falling into disrepar by the time of War of the Ring, with only half the people living in the city as should be physically possible. Constantinople could have had 500 000 residents within its Theodosian Walls, but for most of its history actual number varied from 50 000 to 200 000. Much of the land within the city was abandoned, becoming farmland and even pasture, and at worst points Constantinople was basically a collection of walled villages encompassed by massive Theodosian walls.
8) After Arab invasions in 7th century, Byzantine Empire became an essentially garrison state, where learning and philosophy were abandoned in favour of sheer survival. Cities retracted, literacy dropped (albeit not as much as in Western Europe) and masonry from old buildings was used to build city walls for now much smaller settlements. This is precisely what has happened in Gondor: Boromir is favoured over Faramir in part precisely because latter is interested in lore more than in warfare. Faramir's speech to Frodo is also quite clear about this change in attitude which is indicative of militarization of society.
9) Byzantine Empire had an extensive beacon system which connected Constantinople to Cilicia. Gondor had two systems of beacons, one connecting Minas Tirith to southern fiefs, and another connecting Minas Tirith to border of Rohan.
10) Gondor at its height encircled Bay of Belfalas, much like Byzantine Empire encircled much of Mediterranean Sea.
11) Outermost wall of Minas Tirith was never breached until Witch King used magic to breach the City Gate. Likewise, Theodosian Walls of Constantinople were never breached until invention of gunpowder. There was however one time when Theodosian Walls were nearly defeated after earthquake brought down the walls in 448, but quick reconstruction prevented the catastrophe. This _might _have been alluded to by Tolkien's statement that Wall of Minas Tirith could not be breached except by an earthquake, though it is more likely statement was merely descriptory.
12) Osgilliath however is more similar to Constantinople in that it was original capital of the Eastern Empire, and was besieged multiple times.

Fifth, culture and architecture:
1) Gondorian kings are given nicknames based on the peoples they had defeated - Romendacil, Umbardacil. LIkewise, Roman Emperors often took nicknames based on the opponents they had vanquished - Germanicus, Africanus for Ancient Rome, or Bulgarokontos for Byzantine Empire.
2) Osgilliath has a great dome which collapses at one point, similar to Hagia Sophia.
3) In Gondor, Sindarin was day-to-day language with Quenya being only used by learned men. In Byzantium, Greek was day-to-day language with Latin only used by learned men (and, until Justinian, in administration as well).

I say that Gondor is "obviously" based on Byzantine Empire *because nothing else fits what can be seen from the books. *If you know a state which just so happens to have the sociopolitical and military organization similar enough to serve as basis of that of Gondor, please, go ahead and explain how it fits the points above. Now, Byzantine Empire is not the _only _basis for Gondor - there are major influences from Holy Roman Empire, Hungary and Egypt - but it is clearly the primary one.


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## Deleted member 12094

Well thank you Aldarion for this impressive answer to a question that was not asked to you.

The question was a very simple one: *Give us your exact references where JRRT confirmed Gondor=Byzantine*.

Your only relevant part is this:

_First, we have Tolkien's own statements that Gondor is analogous to the Byzantine Empire:_​_"In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium."_​_"Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith"_​
Factually, to both quotes:

_1. "In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age*, a kind of* proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium."_​​I remember this quote very well; it comes from letter 131 to Milton Waldman. JRRT made that comparison indeed, to illustrate the Arnor/Gondor evolution.​You make a capital mistake in logic here though. Let us imagine a conversation about "animals running on 4 feet": if I compared my daughter’s dog with a cat for that similar propriety, does that make you conclude that my daughter’s dog is a cat? Your "proof" is utterly meaningless!​
_2. "Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith"_​​You did not answer the question: from which exact text from JRRT did you find this? Out of which context you took this is impossible to know. And euh, Minas Tirith=“half-ruinous”…!?​
Though admittedly rich in comparisons with Byzantium (your message is interesting and impressive reading after all, I'll give you that!), you can invent similar analogies to old South-African warfare, to the Holy Roman Empire (as you seem to admit), or to quite a few other empires that rose and fell in history due to internal strife or whatever else. Yeah, and what about a comparable latitude, right. ☺ 

Just remember: JRRT expressed irritation about people looking for all sorts of analogies unintended by him (I must admit I can’t find the exact quote right now but I will try again to locate it later).

In conclusion:

If indeed you have nothing concrete from JRRT to share, then Gondor=Byzantium is wrong and Byzantium=fanfic is right.
Unless ... you could still share something factual from JRRT? I promise you: I'd be a fair loser with minimally concrete proof! Keep digging, Aldarion (or shut up about Byzantium).


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## Aldarion

Merroe said:


> Well thank you Aldarion for this impressive answer to a question that was not asked to you.
> 
> The question was a very simple one: *Give us your exact references where JRRT confirmed Gondor=Byzantine*.
> 
> Your only relevant part is this:
> 
> _First, we have Tolkien's own statements that Gondor is analogous to the Byzantine Empire:_​_"In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium."_​_"Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith"_​
> Factually, to both quotes:
> 
> _1. "In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age*, a kind of* proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium."_​​I remember this quote very well; it comes from letter 131 to Milton Waldman. JRRT made that comparison indeed, to illustrate the Arnor/Gondor evolution.​You make a capital mistake in logic here though. Let us imagine a conversation about "animals running on 4 feet": if I compared my daughter’s dog with a cat for that similar propriety, does that make you conclude that my daughter’s dog is a cat? Your "proof" is utterly meaningless!​
> _2. "Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith"_​​You did not answer the question: from which exact text from JRRT did you find this? Out of which context you took this is impossible to know. And euh, Minas Tirith=“half-ruinous”…!?​
> Though admittedly rich in comparisons with Byzantium (your message is interesting and impressive reading after all, I'll give you that!), you can invent similar analogies to old South-African warfare, to the Holy Roman Empire (as you seem to admit), or to quite a few other empires that rose and fell in history due to internal strife or whatever else. Yeah, and what about a comparable latitude, right. ☺
> 
> Just remember: JRRT expressed irritation about people looking for all sorts of analogies unintended by him (I must admit I can’t find the exact quote right now but I will try again to locate it later).
> 
> In conclusion:
> 
> If indeed you have nothing concrete from JRRT to share, then Gondor=Byzantium is wrong and Byzantium=fanfic is right.
> Unless ... you could still share something factual from JRRT? I promise you: I'd be a fair loser with minimally concrete proof! Keep digging, Aldarion (or shut up about Byzantium).



1) So because Tolkien (to my knowledge) never said that Rohirrim are based on Anglo-Saxons, then "Rohirrim are inspired by Anglo-Saxons" is wrong (it is incomplete - Anglo-Saxons are not the _only_ inspiration - but they very much are _an _inspiration)? If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. And Tolkien did in fact say that Gondor is analogous to (or at least inspired by) Byzantium, multiple times if memory serves me right. But merely parroting his statements is no fun, and besides, *how he described Gondor *matters much more than any statements he could have made about Gondor.
2) Reference is Hammond and Scull, "Reader's Companion". And yes, Minas Tirith is very much half-ruinous: _Return of the King_ makes it clear that its population at the time of War of the Ring was half of what it could have been.

This is the full paragraph. It comes from the "Reader's Companion", "EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN TO MILTON WALDMAN, ?LATE 1951, ON THE LORD OF THE RINGS":


> The Fifth Book returns to the precise point at which Book Three ended. Gandalf on his great horse (with the Hobbit Peregrin Took) passing along the great 'north-road', South to Gondor. *Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith*, and meet its grim lord, the old proud wizard-like Steward, Denethor. He prepares for war and hopeless siege. The last levies from the remaining fiefs march in. The great darkness comes. The Nazgul ride the air, cowing all hearts. Slowly the assault begins and mounts in fire and terror. Denethor commits suicide. The Sorcerer-King, Captain of the Black Riders, overthrows the 'unbreakable' gates of the City. Gandalf alone is left to face him.



I do not care whether something is a "fanfic" or not. What I care about is whether it is correct. And yes, I am aware that Tolkien did not like allegory. But allegories and inspirations, or allegories and analogies, are not the same thing. I very much doubt that he pulled anything out of thin air; human mind requires ideas to breed ideas (much like Rings of Power and gold). Hence, everything in Tolkien's opus had to have come from _somewhere_.

And no, neither analogies to old South-African warfare nor to Holy Roman Empire work. You can find _some _parallels _anywhere_, yes. But there is a point after which parallels can no longer be accidental. Holy Roman Empire, for example, simply does not work as parallel for Gondor:

Its political structure is completely different.
Its military structure is significantly different.
Its geography is completely different.
Its history is very different.
Yes, there are *elements *of Holy Roman Empire in Gondor, but these are minimal. Far more pronounced are elements of ancient Egypt (division into Northern and Southern kingdom, shape of the crown, focus on tombs, embalming, huge monuments - compare Argonath to Abu Simbel or Colossi of Memnon). But these do not negate Gondor's similarities to Byzantium - or vice-versa. Gondor is not Byzantine Empire, but is very much inspired by it. And since I am familiar with Byzantine Empire, but only familiar with Egypt on a rather superficial level, it is natural for me to focus on former and only occasionally mention the latter.

In the end, what matters is what he wrote, and what can be concluded from it. After all, Byzantium is hardly the only thing he was inspired by, and I very much doubt he even mentioned, let alone listed, all of his inspirations. You may disagree with my conclusions, and I would be more than happy to debate you on that, but I will not "shut up about Byzantium" regardless of whether you accept Tolkien's words as proof of his inspiration.


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## Deleted member 12094

Aldarion said:


> And Tolkien did in fact say that Gondor is analogous to (or at least inspired by) Byzantium, multiple times



Where Aldarion? Where?????

You cannot answer the question. You avoid the question, and you avoid it all the time. You are empty-handed.
And JRRT is no longer there to defend himself.

Why so many words Aldarion ... in French they'd call it "_noyer le poisson_".

From there on, how you can dream up Byzantine army numbers (down to the last single soldier) or Byzantine tax collectors in Gondor, as you did in other treads, is no business in the original forum (where from we are now diverted but where facts of literature are discussed).

I propose you to keep your Byzantium away from there.
Is that *still *not reasonably enough for you...?


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## Olorgando

Aldarion said:


> ...
> First, we have Tolkien's own statements that Gondor is analogous to the Byzantine Empire:
> _"In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium."_
> ...
> I say that Gondor is "obviously" based on Byzantine Empire *because nothing else fits what can be seen from the books. *If you know a state which just so happens to have the sociopolitical and military organization similar enough to serve as basis of that of Gondor, please, go ahead and explain how it fits the points above. Now, Byzantine Empire is not the _only _basis for Gondor - there are major influences from Holy Roman Empire, Hungary and Egypt - but it is clearly the primary one.


Aldarion, if you were to say that Gondor has similarities, even many similarities, with the Byzantine Empire, I would not quibble. That said, I am not that impressed with *finding* similarities (I am impressed with the effort you must have put in *searching* for them), as there have been enough studies (perhaps concentrating a bit more on numerology) that if we *wish* to find similarities, we will. The danger is becoming blind for (at times glaring) differences which weaken the argument that we wish to put forward.

But as you jump from JRRT's statement "_a *kind of* proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium_" for Gondor in its decayed Middle Age to "Gondor *is "obviously" based on* Byzantine Empire", I disagree. That comes close to being allegory. There I would, echoing Merroe, firmly ask for an unequivocal, written statement by JRRT himself making this equation.

I will reply to you list of similarities with perhaps a handful of not-so-trivial differences between Arnor and Gondor vis-á-vis Western Empire and Eastern Empire.

First and simplest, Arnor is called the Northern Kingdom (and it's a bit more to the west), Gondor the Southern Kingdom (and a bit more to the east, leaving aside very temporary conquests in the east), while you state above that Rome and Constantinople are basically at the same latitude; and the latter are both in the Mediterranean. This is not trivial. If Hobbiton is supposed to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then that's 51°45' N. Annuminas and Fornost seem to be about 95 miles (153 kilometers) north of that, which is a bit south of 53° N, or the northern German plains. A place not a few of those Germanic tribes started migrating away from due to worsening climate after the Roman Optimum centered around the reign of Augustus, leading ultimately to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Agriculture and everything dependent on it (so until very recently, almost everything) are quite different at such differing latitudes.

Arnor and Gondor were founded pretty much at the same time. But at no time, certainly in the Third Age, could Arnor ever have been more powerful than Gondor. By contrast, Rome was the center of power for centuries even before it became (officially) an empire under Augustus, never mind Constantine moving the capital to Byzantion over three hundred years later. And certainly Arnor never was able to expand much, in contrast to Rome's beginnings as a city-state, never mind found Gondor centuries later. There never were two distinct Roman capital cities before Constantine.

You then shift the comparison from the (by then defunct) Western Roman Empire to the Frankish or Carolingian one. That would have had to be the Éothéod, leading a large alliance of other Northmen, becoming rulers of Arnor somehow. Whatever that business of Pope Leo III crowning Charlemagne "Roman" Emperor was - among other things Leo had agendas of his own, against the Byzantine ruler who was duly not amused - it hardly re-established a Western "Roman Empire" (despite all of the fuss electing an "Holy Roman Emperor" caused for centuries until Napoleon Bonaparte put an end to that farce), and even the Carolingian one only survived intact for one generation after Charlemagne. Arnor managed over 800 years ...

And then the bit instigated from "Western Rome", in this case the popes, the crusades. Especially infamous the Fourth Crusade with the sack of Constantinople. To stay with the imperfect HRE - ERE comparison, as if descendants of that hypothetical Éothéod, sort of nasty mega-Rohirrim, had, while ostensibly on their way to deal with Mordor, sacked Gondor (or perhaps "only" Osgiliath) instead. They never did make it to Mordor, but sure helped Sauron a lot.

Again, similarities, yes, perhaps more with the Byzantine Empire than HRE, but as you stated above, you are more familiar with Byzantium. A specialist on the HRE might find quite a few similarities there and put them forward against your "claims" - and would probably also fall into the trap of ignoring (glaring) differences.


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## Halasían

Aldarion said:


> _"It is not fanfic. I do not explain it in detail before because, frankly, it should be obvious to anyone who has even superficial knowledge of Gondor's and Byzantine history both. If nobody here understands relation and similarities of Byzantium and Gondor, then this site does not have that much credibility to be undermined to begin with. (Sorry if tone of response seems aggressive, but what you wrote is basically combination of personal attack and emotional blackmail). And no, Gondor is not just Byzantine Empire - it also has influences of Holy Roman Empire and ancient Egypt - but parallels with Byzantine Empire are the most obvious - though this might simply be due to me having more knowledge about Byzantine Empire than about ancient Egypt (or HRE, for that matter)."_


I still have to agree with Erendis, Merroe, and Gando (!) here. It's fine if you want to try and extend that _Byzantium_ reach of Tolkien's statement, but it is in effect your interpretation, which, makes it more fanfic and less fact. To disparage this whle site because you don't see others thinking as you do on it is quite close-minded, and quite rude I may add. Your presentations here do make for some fascinating reading though.


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## Alcuin

I think Ologando and Halasían are correct here, Aldarion. I happen to agree with you that Minas Tirith may be in large part based upon Constantinople before its fall, and Gondor therefore upon Byzantium, but with the hounds baying at your heels, your best and wisest move might be to rephrase your argument to something like _“Tolkien seems to have used Byzantium as a model for Minas Tirith.”_ That statement seems nearly irrefutable, and leaves room for other additions, changes, and _applicabilities_ (as opposed to allegories), too. 

Constantinople is clearly not the _only_ model for Minas Tirith nor Byzantium for Gondor, but they are indeed very, very similar.


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## Aldarion

Merroe said:


> Where Aldarion? Where?????



I have just cited some of them.



Olorgando said:


> Aldarion, if you were to say that Gondor has similarities, even many similarities, with the Byzantine Empire, I would not quibble. That said, I am not that impressed with *finding* similarities (I am impressed with the effort you must have put in *searching* for them), as there have been enough studies (perhaps concentrating a bit more on numerology) that if we *wish* to find similarities, we will. The danger is becoming blind for (at times glaring) differences which weaken the argument that we wish to put forward.
> 
> But as you jump from JRRT's statement "_a *kind of* proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium_" for Gondor in its decayed Middle Age to "Gondor *is "obviously" based on* Byzantine Empire", I disagree. That comes close to being allegory. There I would, echoing Merroe, firmly ask for an unequivocal, written statement by JRRT himself making this equation.



I say that Gondor is "obviously" based on Byzantine Empire because, as far as I can see, _*nothing else fits *_even though it is almost as obvious (to me) that Byzantine Empire is not the sole inspiration for Gondor.

Gondor is far too centralized for a feudal state, with absolutely no evidence for insubfeudation. But on the other hand, its provincial governors are also military commanders, which is much more decentralized than Roman or early Byzantine provincial system. That is basically what Byzantine thematic system is all about. Look at commanders coming to Minas Tirith - each leads their own force, and none of them are subordinate to one another, as would be the case in feudal system.
Gondor is also centered on a single extremely-fortified city - while other fortresses do exist, it is clear that everyone believes that fall of Minas Tirith would mean fall of Gondor. This again is the same as Byzantine Empire which was centered on Constantinople.
And then we have all the other organizational, sociological and historical similarities I have listed in the OP which I will not repeat here.
Again, *if you can find a single state which "checks all the boxes" I have listed other than Byzantine Empire*, I will concede. I have not found such. No, Gondor is not _allegory_ for Byzantine Empire, but is clearly _inspired by_ it. *Allegory and inspiration are not the same.*

I have not had to put all that much of effort into searching for similarities I have listed (though I did spend effort double-checking them, especially on a _LotR _side). I have spent a lot of time researching Byzantine Empire for other purposes, and most of these similarities were _glaringly _obvious as soon as I started a reread. Had I put significant effort into making the list, said list would likely be much longer, and each point would be much more extensive.



Olorgando said:


> I will reply to you list of similarities with perhaps a handful of not-so-trivial differences between Arnor and Gondor vis-á-vis Western Empire and Eastern Empire.
> 
> First and simplest, Arnor is called the Northern Kingdom (and it's a bit more to the west), Gondor the Southern Kingdom (and a bit more to the east, leaving aside very temporary conquests in the east), while you state above that Rome and Constantinople are basically at the same latitude; and the latter are both in the Mediterranean. This is not trivial. If Hobbiton is supposed to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then that's 51°45' N. Annuminas and Fornost seem to be about 95 miles (153 kilometers) north of that, which is a bit south of 53° N, or the northern German plains. A place not a few of those Germanic tribes started migrating away from due to worsening climate after the Roman Optimum centered around the reign of Augustus, leading ultimately to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Agriculture and everything dependent on it (so until very recently, almost everything) are quite different at such differing latitudes.
> 
> Arnor and Gondor were founded pretty much at the same time. But at no time, certainly in the Third Age, could Arnor ever have been more powerful than Gondor. By contrast, Rome was the center of power for centuries even before it became (officially) an empire under Augustus, never mind Constantine moving the capital to Byzantion over three hundred years later. And certainly Arnor never was able to expand much, in contrast to Rome's beginnings as a city-state, never mind found Gondor centuries later. There never were two distinct Roman capital cities before Constantine.
> 
> You then shift the comparison from the (by then defunct) Western Roman Empire to the Frankish or Carolingian one. That would have had to be the Éothéod, leading a large alliance of other Northmen, becoming rulers of Arnor somehow. Whatever that business of Pope Leo III crowning Charlemagne "Roman" Emperor was - among other things Leo had agendas of his own, against the Byzantine ruler who was duly not amused - it hardly re-established a Western "Roman Empire" (despite all of the fuss electing an "Holy Roman Emperor" caused for centuries until Napoleon Bonaparte put an end to that farce), and even the Carolingian one only survived intact for one generation after Charlemagne. Arnor managed over 800 years ...
> 
> And then the bit instigated from "Western Rome", in this case the popes, the crusades. Especially infamous the Fourth Crusade with the sack of Constantinople. To stay with the imperfect HRE - ERE comparison, as if descendants of that hypothetical Éothéod, sort of nasty mega-Rohirrim, had, while ostensibly on their way to deal with Mordor, sacked Gondor (or perhaps "only" Osgiliath) instead. They never did make it to Mordor, but sure helped Sauron a lot.
> 
> Again, similarities, yes, perhaps more with the Byzantine Empire than HRE, but as you stated above, you are more familiar with Byzantium. A specialist on the HRE might find quite a few similarities there and put them forward against your "claims" - and would probably also fall into the trap of ignoring (glaring) differences.



It might be problem with terminology I had used - English is not my first language - but as I have pointed out in OP, I do not believe that Byzantine Empire is the *sole* inspiration for Gondor, but I do believe it is the *primary *one. Likewise, I never stated that Tolkien did a one-for-one transplant from history to fantasy, but was rather inspired by certain historical events - but he obviously shifted them around and changed them. Again, it is not a copy-paste job. All the differences you list are basically hairsplitting.

Arnor and Gondor both show - much like Numenor - inspirations from Egypt as well (and I have pointed that out even in the OP, but you appear to have missed it). "Northern Kingdom" and "Southern Kingdom" thing you mention obviously play into Egyptian inspiration. However, the manner of division (kingdoms were divided by brothers) is likely inspired by Roman Empire - especially in the light of the fact that Arnor is later divided into three kingdoms, much like Frankish Empire (which claimed to be "resurrected" or "continued" Western Roman Empire) was.
Difference in history re:foundation and conquest you point out is because Numenor is basically Atlantis (if _Atalante _does not make it clear...). Imagine if Roman Empire was not Roman but rather Atlantean Empire, and then Atlantis sank, leaving its colonies to fend for themselves. That is basically situation of Arnor and Gondor. Again, Arnor is not Western Empire transplant, nor is Gondor a Byzantium transplant; but WRE and Byzantine Empire were major sources of inspiration for two kingdoms.
Symbolic superiority of Arnor in spite of its weakness you cite as counter to my belief actually supports said belief. Ever since Roman Empire achieved its full extent (cca AD50) and even before that, it was *Eastern* portion of the Empire which was more powerful economically, culturally, sociologically and - eventually - militarily. But Emperor himself was for long time in the West, and even after division it was oftentimes Western Emperor who was _senior Augustus_ (Valentinian I. took West as _senior Augustus_ while giving his brother - a junior Augustus - eastern provinces). And Western Empire of course always had Rome itself. Military balance only gradually shifted eastwards. At time of Augustus (in 14 AD), Western areas of the Empire had 20 legions, while Eastern portions had 8 legions (so 71-39). But this gradually changed. At time of Septimius Severus, there were 16 legions in the West to 17 legions in the East (48-52). And at time of Theodosius, West had 15 legions to East's 27 legions (36-64). Despite that, Valentinian I. (who ruled cca. 370 - 160 years after Septimius Severus and 30 years before Theodosius) took clearly weaker West while giving stronger East to his junior partner. This is again similar to what happened with Arnor and Gondor: during the time of Last Alliance Arnor was clearly militarily superior to Gondor, but as time passed, Arnor only weakened while Gondor (initially at least) grew stronger, until latter eventually achieved uncontestable military superiority. Despite that, it was kings of Arnor who - through Elendil and Isildur - had a claim to High Kingship, though they obviously never pushed it (until Arvedui, who was rejected by southern kingdom, much like Byzantine Empire rejected at least two offers at marriage alliance from Frankish and later Holy Roman Emperors). And by the time Gondor itself declined, Arnor was no more, just as Western Roman Empire was long gone by the time of Plague of Justinian (which started the decline of Eastern Roman Empire). In fact, by the time Gondor achieved greatest territorial extent (cca TA 1050), Arnor had already long ceased to exist, having broken up into three kingdoms in TA 861. - just as Western Empire was a memory by the time of Justinian I. (ruled from 527., where WRE fell in 480. at latest).
Again, *I never said that Tolkien transplanted history on a one-for-one basis*. Yes, decline of Arnor is not copy-paste of decline of Western Roman Empire. Rather, I point out that history of Arnor appears to be inspired by - or, rather, use various *elements *of - the history of Western Roman Empire and Frankish Empire. Closest analogue would be if Frankish Empire was _actual_ Western Roman Empire which then got split into three states, which then proceeded to get exterminated instead of developing into France, Germany and Italy-Switzerland-BENELUX, respectively. Quite different from actual history, but also clearly inspired by it.
Migration of barbarians into Western Roman Empire is not paralleled by / used as inspiration for migration of Rohirrim, but rather is closer to that of Hobbits. Hobbits migrated into increasingly depopulated Arnor, and were given land under condition of providing (military?) service to Kingdom of Arnor. This is basically what Western Roman Empire did with its own barbarian _foederati _by granting them housing and eventually lands under _hospitalitas_ system. Marcho and Blanco are inspired by Hengest and Horsa who led Anglo-Saxons to Britain, and Hobbit "obsession" with geneaology is also inspired by Anglo-Saxon culture.
Overall, Tolkien used various sources and freely mixed-and-matched them. This means that GRRM-style copy-pasta job you appear to be expecting is simply not there; but that is also why identifying Tolkien's potential sources of inspiration is much more fun. Fact that there are indeed glaring differences between Gondor and Byzantium (or Arnor and WRE) does not negate equally - or even more - glaring similarities.

What you are saying is akin to stating that Vetronian Empire from my own worldbuilding project is not inspired by Western Roman Empire because it gets invaded by underwater demons instead of barbarians and manages to survive until 15th century where Western Roman Empire fell in 5th century. But I know what I had as inspiration for my setting. Since Tolkien is long dead, however, we cannot ask him where he drew his inspiration from - all we can do is speculate.



Halasían said:


> I still have to agree with Erendis, Merroe, and Gando (!) here. It's fine if you want to try and extend that _Byzantium_ reach of Tolkien's statement, but it is in effect your interpretation, which, makes it more fanfic and less fact. To disparage this whle site because you don't see others thinking as you do on it is quite close-minded, and quite rude I may add. Your presentations here do make for some fascinating reading though.



I am not "disparaging the site because I do not see others thinking as I do". I am disparaging the notion that discussion on Tolkien's potential inspiration should be avoided because it does not deal in cold, hard facts. This is what I was responding to with the quote you are replying to:


> Pls beware that, by proposing nonsense for facts in this TTF forum area, you are not only confusing prospective readers; you are also undermining the credibility of this site.


Merroe here basically attempted to preemptively close off any possibility of discussion on Tolkien's inspiration by stating that such discussion is "nonsense" which somehow "undermines the credibility of this site". I do not see how it could - in every literary discussion I have participated, including forums such as ASoIaF forum, *discussing author's inspiration is perfectly normal.* When it comes to Tolkien specifically, you have whole books discussing that stuff. No author draws inspiration from thin air, it is coming from _somewhere_. Now, I do understand that I might have discussed it in wrong forum area - which is why I started this thread as I figured "Hall of Fire" would be appropriate for such discussion - but his statement that I am *"proposing nonsense for facts"* (when I have never "proposed it for facts", and have also explained, *multiple times* as Merroe noted, where my belief that Gondor is inspired by Byzantium comes from, so it is hardly nonsense either) is not something I could simply ignore in cold blood.



Alcuin said:


> I think Ologando and Halasían are correct here, Aldarion. I happen to agree with you that Minas Tirith may be in large part based upon Constantinople before its fall, and Gondor therefore upon Byzantium, but with the hounds baying at your heels, your best and wisest move might be to rephrase your argument to something like _“Tolkien seems to have used Byzantium as a model for Minas Tirith.”_ That statement seems nearly irrefutable, and leaves room for other additions, changes, and _applicabilities_ (as opposed to allegories), too.
> 
> Constantinople is clearly not the _only_ model for Minas Tirith nor Byzantium for Gondor, but they are indeed very, very similar.



And again, I have never stated they are the _only_ inspirations (thus "and other parallels" in thread title, as I was expecting this thread to move beyond Byzantium at some point - as it already appears to be doing), just that they are (to me) the most obvious ones. There were discussions on this site about Tolkien's inspirations before (geographic, mythological-religious, mythological etc.). I do not see why discussing his historical inspirations should be such a problem. And as I have said before, the reason why I focused on Byzantine Empire is because I am most familiar with it; but I took care to leave room for discussing other potential sources of inspiration Professor had, hence "and other parallels" in the title.


----------



## Olorgando

Aldarion said:


> ...
> I say that Gondor is "obviously" based on Byzantine Empire because, as far as I can see, _*nothing else fits *_even though it is almost as obvious (to me) that Byzantine Empire is not the sole inspiration for Gondor.
> ...
> Again, *if you can find a single state which "checks all the boxes" I have listed other than Byzantine Empire*, I will concede. I have not found such. No, Gondor is not _allegory_ for Byzantine Empire, but is clearly _inspired by_ it. *Allegory and inspiration are not the same.*
> 
> I have not had to put all that much of effort into searching for similarities I have listed (though I did spend effort double-checking them, especially on a _LotR _side). I have spent a lot of time researching Byzantine Empire for other purposes, and most of these similarities were _glaringly _obvious as soon as I started a reread. Had I put significant effort into making the list, said list would likely be much longer, and each point would be much more extensive.
> ...
> It might be problem with terminology I had used - English is not my first language - but as I have pointed out in OP, I do not believe that Byzantine Empire is the *sole* inspiration for Gondor, but I do believe it is the *primary *one. Likewise, I never stated that Tolkien did a one-for-one transplant from history to fantasy, but was rather inspired by certain historical events - but he obviously shifted them around and changed them. Again, it is not a copy-paste job. All the differences you list are basically hairsplitting.
> ...


Your command of English puts many certified native speakers that I have known to shame, there is no problem of understanding your arguments. It is with your assumptions and thus consequently conclusions that I continue to quibble.

One question out of curiosity: "I have spent a lot of time researching Byzantine Empire for other purposes", which seems quite obvious to me. Did you research the Byzantine Empire before of after having read LoTR?

You say "nothing else fits". Which could simply mean that the history of the Byzantine Empire "checks all the boxes", as you also state. *This could be pure coincidence*. JRRT might have drawn "inspiration" for all of your checked boxes from, as an hypothetical example, say five different regions, nations and time periods. All of them would fail to "checks *all* the boxes" as does the Byzantine Empire, but still it would not be even the *primary* inspiration you deduce. And I have the feeling that you may be ignoring, or perhaps simply not be equally well-read, in at least 500 years of Rome, be it republic or empire, before Constantine moved the capital (not that I am; but Rome had dealings with Easterlings well east of Byzantion centuries earlier; the part of the Southrons could be taken by Carthage).

Have you ever considered that your research of the Byzantine Empire far exceeds that JRRT himself ever did? Considering the time he was writing LoTR, even experts of the time might not have had all the information available today. And why would JRRT have been interested enough, never mind have the time, to get into some of the details you have given? Both his professional and his private interests (as he stated himself often enough) were with language, not with the history and organization of real-world states, nations or empires. Perhaps with the exception of the "Anglo-Saxons" on whom he modelled the Rohirrim. UT contains several sections dealing with the Rohirrim and their being "Anglo-Saxons with horses". Nothing of the sort about Gondor. Much of what he wrote in an explanatory fashion in letters to readers mentioning Egypt and Byzantium was just that, trying to give readers without our benefit of Sil, UT, and HoMe a feeling (or "taste", as he might have said) of what he was aiming at. And I have stated my skepticism about leaning too heavily on statements in his letters, even when these statements were not (as some were) at variance with what he had committed to manuscript - but of course at the time not published yet. To deduce primary inspiration pointing to the Byzantine Empire (or Egypt, or the "Holy Roman Empire", or whatever) is taking this slender "evidence" beyond what it can truly provide.

Similarities, yes, you have found many, and they do make fascinating reading, as has been mentioned already. But I remain unconvinced about your claim to primary inspiration.
I spent some time yesterday looking for two quotes by JRRT (most likely in letters, too) that point in a different direction, but without success. I have to give them from memory.
One was that JRRT stated that a writer, or specifically he himself, would locate his stories in the regions familiar to him as "home". Being the north-west of Europe, e.g. England and the lands bordering the North Sea on its eastern shores, Belgium to Denmark, perhaps. More to the point is what he *excluded* as being inspiration to him, including the Aegean.
Another was, IIRC, the answer to a reader's question about how one should imagine the reunited kingdoms under Aragorn. The answer was, again IIRC, "an _efficient _re-established Holy Roman Empire" (which would make this something the historical one certainly never was).


----------



## Aldarion

Olorgando said:


> One question out of curiosity: "I have spent a lot of time researching Byzantine Empire for other purposes", which seems quite obvious to me. Did you research the Byzantine Empire before of after having read LoTR?



After. I was still in classical Roman Empire phase when I first read LotR (I was a kid back then, grandad had a picture book about Roman Army - this one, specifically - and from there followed logical outcome.



Olorgando said:


> You say "nothing else fits". Which could simply mean that the history of the Byzantine Empire "checks all the boxes", as you also state. *This could be pure coincidence*. JRRT might have drawn "inspiration" for all of your checked boxes from, as an hypothetical example, say five different regions, nations and time periods. All of them would fail to "checks *all* the boxes" as does the Byzantine Empire, but still it would not be even the *primary* inspiration you deduce. And I have the feeling that you may be ignoring, or perhaps simply not be equally well-read, in at least 500 years of Rome, be it republic or empire, before Constantine moved the capital (not that I am; but Rome had dealings with Easterlings well east of Byzantion centuries earlier; the part of the Southrons could be taken by Carthage).



It might be, but that is rather unlikely. It comes down to context and Occam's Razor:
1) Occam's Razor: Byzantine Empire fits most of things which we know about Gondor. If it is a choice between one source of inspiration which fits, and five different sources of inspiration which have to be Frankensteined in order to fit, _and_ in a way to fit said one source, then former is a more logical and likely answer than the latter (though as I noted, Byzantium does not fit everything about Gondor).
2) Context: Tolkien was writing _European_ mythology, with Shire being (rural) England. This makes it very likely that many if not all other elements present in Lord of the Rings are drawn from European mythology and history, which means that it is Europe which should be looked at first when studying where he drew his inspirations from (including however Middle East and North Africa).
3) Tolkien's own statements may not be direct proof of anything, but they do prove that he was thinking of European-Mediterranean cultural area when writing Lord of the Rings. In said area, Byzantine Empire fits the best (with, again, elements of Egypt and perhaps few other civilizations being present).

I am not ignoring last 500 years of Roman Empire, but again: the evidence does not fit. Roman Empire had a standing, fully-professional and _mobile_ army. Gondor's army at the time of Lord of the Rings is clearly _provincial,_ as can be seen from scene where reinforcements arrive to Minas Tirith, thus ruling out pre-Middle Byzantine Roman army as a source of inspiration. There are three medieval European military systems (that I know of) which roughly fit what is seen of Gondorian military organization: Anglo-Saxon _fyrd_, Carolingian _lantweri _and Byzantine _themata_. Of three, _themata_ were (relatively) highly professional part-time soldiers, _lantweri _were conscripts / land defense militia, while _fyrd_ was in-between the two models and moved from one extreme to another depending on when exactly we are talking about.

Which brings us back to history I have discussed. Anglo-Saxon _fyrd_ is unlikely as inspiration for Gondor's military system, because Gondor itself is clearly a highly developed (if not overtly urban) civilization, and at any rate Rohirrim fit Anglo-Saxon culture much more closely (their attitude to death, to heroism in battle, and so on). Gondor however has outright Byzantine view of war, and Faramir's speech outlines what I like to call the Byzantine conundrum: _"we too have become more like them, and can scarcely claim the title High. We are become Middle Men, of the Twillight, but with memory of other things. For as the Rohirrim do, we now love war and valour as good things in themselves, both as sport and an end (...)"_. While I am not certain Tolkien intended _so close _of a parallel, Byzantines had the same conflict between recognizing need for war, valour of a soldier, and their own beliefs which held that killing is a sin. This attitude stood in stark contrast to that of "Franks", who reveled in warfare, slaughter and carnage. Rohirrim attitudes to death are however Anglo-Saxon, and Meduseld itself is dropped straight from _Beowulf_.

Above means that _fyrd_ is unlikely as an inspiration. So what about _lantweri_? They were a general call to arms. But this call to arms was typically a purely local matter, intended to oppose raiders. Such forces would likely be completely incapable of sending _any _troops for defence of Minas Tirith (though my knowledge of _lantweri_ is not so great that I could make such a claim with certainty). It is clear however that _lantweri_ were actually rather ineffective at opposing proper war bands such as Viking raiders - against a proper army, they would and did get slaughtered (issue was not equipment, but rather discipline). Yet Gondor's provincial troops are able to check attacks by the Corsairs, and also clearly form majority of Gondor's military power which is still formidable even at the end of Third Age. And going back to culture, Franks, too, had "heroic" view of the war: medieval knightly chivalry was an attempt at reconciliation of Frankish obsession with warfare and Christian aversion towards the same. Which again does not fit Gondor.

All of this leaves only Byzantine _themata_ as basis of Gondor's military organization, though as I noted, it is probably not the _only_ inspiration. Gondor is clearly not a feudal state; what we see of political and military organization of Gondor itself as well Sauron's focus on Minas Tirith both point towards a fairly centralized state of a Byzantine model. Army is distinctly provincial, as noted in discussion of other two models. Yet Gondor has two things which neither of other two states had: a) eras of naval dominance (though long past by the time of War of the Ring) and b) massive fortifications. Anglo-Saxons were primarily infantry army, while Franks were outright aquaphobic, with only one unsuccessful attempt at naval dominance for the entire duration of Frankish state. Gondor had Ship-Kings, and as late as 2980 was capable of mounting offensive naval expeditions (though not exactly major ones). Gondor also built major fortifications during its height: MInas Tirith, Minas Anor, Aglarond and Orthanc. None of them would be ever surpassed by anything built outside Mordor (Barad-dur _was_ noted as being larger and stronger than Minas Tirith). This recalls how Constantinople remained _the_ most fortified city of Medieval Europe throughout its existence, while London and Paris were - until later Middle Ages - basically villages by comparison.



Olorgando said:


> *Have you ever considered that your research of the Byzantine Empire far exceeds that JRRT himself ever did? Considering the time he was writing LoTR, even experts of the time might not have had all the information available today.* And why would JRRT have been interested enough, never mind have the time, to get into some of the details you have given? Both his professional and his private interests (as he stated himself often enough) were with language, not with the history and organization of real-world states, nations or empires. Perhaps with the exception of the "Anglo-Saxons" on whom he modelled the Rohirrim. UT contains several sections dealing with the Rohirrim and their being "Anglo-Saxons with horses". Nothing of the sort about Gondor. Much of what he wrote in an explanatory fashion in letters to readers mentioning Egypt and Byzantium was just that, trying to give readers without our benefit of Sil, UT, and HoMe a feeling (or "taste", as he might have said) of what he was aiming at. And I have stated my skepticism about leaning too heavily on statements in his letters, even when these statements were not (as some were) at variance with what he had committed to manuscript - but of course at the time not published yet. To deduce primary inspiration pointing to the Byzantine Empire (or Egypt, or the "Holy Roman Empire", or whatever) is taking this slender "evidence" beyond what it can truly provide.



Indeed I have. And if Tolkien did indeed base Gondor's military primarily on Byzantine model, it can then be seen that Tolkien's description of Gondor's military actually reflects some of rather outdated notions about Byzantine thematic troops, such as belief that thematic infantry were soldiers-peasants (as put forth by Ostrogorsky, for example). We know today that even thematic infantrymen were actually part-time professionals who, in addition to plot of land, received wages from central government. Yet there is no mention of such payments by Tolkien, and many of troops who come to Minas Tirith from provinces are clearly not professional soldiers.

At any rate, Tolkien does not go into specifics of military organization that would have required him to study Byzantine or Anglo-Saxon military organization in detail. He gave us enough about Gondor's military organization to conclude the following:
1) soldiers are not full-time professionals of a standing army, as evidenced by highly varying levels of equipment among provincial troops
2) military is organized on territorial basis as evidenced by identification of troops with provinces*

* Forlong and "_Men of Lossarnach_", "_The men of Ringlo Vale behind the son of their lord, Dervorin, striding on foot: three hundreds. From the uplands of Morthond, the great Blackroot Vale, tall Duinhir with his sons, Duilin and Derufin, and five hundred bowmen. From the Anfalas, the Langstrand far away, long line of men of many sorts, hunters and herdsmen and the men of little villages, scantily equipped save for the household of Golasgil their lord. From Lamedon, a few grim hillmen without a captain. Fisher-folk of the Ethir, some hundred or more spared from the ships. Hirluin the Fair of the Green Hills from Pinnath Gelin with three hundreds of gallant green-clad men. And last and proudest, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord, with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, and a company of knights in full harness riding their horses; and behind them seven hundreds of men at arms, tall as lords, grey-eyed, dark-haired, singing as they came._".
Notice several things:

Army is distinctly _provincial_. All the troops are identified _primarily _by the province they come from. There is not the trace of feudal or else tribal identification (by families and tribes, respectively). Aside from description cited above, there is also the fact that Aragorn comes "_leading a great valour of the folk of Lebennin and Lamedon and the fiefs of the South_". Again, territorial identification.
While lords are important figures, they are primarily commanders and leaders. Notice how Imrahil is _Prince of Dol Amroth_, *not* _Prince of Belfalas._ And the fact that he is noted as "kinsman" of Denethor - and thus also distantly related to the line of Kings - means that his title and authority likely ultimately stem from Denethor himself, as opposed to his inherited ownership over lands in province (or province itself). This is something which reminds of Byzantine Komnenian system, where aristocracy were all directly related to the Emperor and imperial family, yet their authority still stemmed from Imperial offices. In short, nothing feudal about it.
All of this fits Byzantine territorial organization (though again, it is not the _only_ model which fits).

There is also the fact that Tolkien _did_, in fact, provide us with (at least some elements of) political organization of Numenor as well as Kingdoms in Exile (citations pulled from here as I was too lazy to search for originals):
_"A Numenorean king was monarch, with the power of unquestioned decision in debate; but he governed the realm with the frame of ancient law, of which he was administrator (and interpreter) but not maker."
"In the days that followed his crowning the King sat on his throne in the Hall of Kings and pronounced judgements...And there were brought before him many to receive his praise and reward for their valour;"
"In all debatable matters of importance domestic, or external, however, even Denethor had a Council and at least listened to what the Lords of the Fiefs and the Captains of the Forces had to say."_

This again is a system that is rather Byzantine in nature. Ruler has apparently unlimited authority, but in practice his authority is still limited by _tradition_ - by the "ancient law" in Gondor, by Roman political tradition and Christian moral in Byzantium. And a ruler which in some way breaks, or is perceived as breaking, said tradition, can be rebelled against: Gondor experienced Kin strife for this reason, while Byzantine Emperors had to deal with rebellions regular as clockwork.

There is also evidence of attitude towards rank that is less feudal and more Byzantine. Beregond was ordinary man and ordinary soldier, yet was promoted to Captain of White Company for his loyalty to Faramir. Thorongil became a "great leader of men" and Captain of Gondor despite being a _de facto_ foreign mercenary, and nobody having a clue about his nobility. At the same time however, Gondor's hierarchy is much more formal than that of Rohan, where Merry interacts with Theoden almost as if man is his grandfather, and hierarchy itself is much more horizontal than that of Gondor.

You may find this interesting; it in fact repeats some of my points but also discusses other political entities in Middle-Earth. I found it by accident while searching for quotes:


https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=mythlore



Overall, Tolkien's sociological, political and military systems are too consistent and logical to say that he was "not interested" in such things.

And lastly, as noted in OP, both history and geostrategic situation of Gondor do parallel Byzantine Empire to a great extent.



Olorgando said:


> Similarities, yes, you have found many, and they do make fascinating reading, as has been mentioned already. But I remain unconvinced about your claim to primary inspiration.
> I spent some time yesterday looking for two quotes by JRRT (most likely in letters, too) that point in a different direction, but without success. I have to give them from memory.
> One was that JRRT stated that a writer, or specifically he himself, would locate his stories in the regions familiar to him as "home". Being the north-west of Europe, e.g. England and the lands bordering the North Sea on its eastern shores, Belgium to Denmark, perhaps. More to the point is what he *excluded* as being inspiration to him, including the Aegean.
> Another was, IIRC, the answer to a reader's question about how one should imagine the reunited kingdoms under Aragorn. The answer was, again IIRC, "an _efficient _re-established Holy Roman Empire" (which would make this something the historical one certainly never was).



I am familiar with latter quote ("progress of the tales ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome." ). However, Gondor itself has abolutely nothing in common with historical Holy Roman Empire. Reunited Kingdom under Aragorn may have: we know that Shire remains _de facto_ independent.

As for stories being located in the regions familiar to him, that is NW Europe, Middle Earth - even just north-Western portion (as delineated by Umbar, Mordor and Sea of Rhun) is too large to be merely "lands bordering the North Sea". And that quote you referred to (about north-west of Europe) is also completely contradicted by this quote (assuming you are not misremembering, as this quote might in fact be what you are referring to): _“The action of the story takes place *in the North-West of ‘Middle-earth’*, *equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean* (…) If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be about the latitude of Oxford, *then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.*”_ So it is quite clear that story is _not_ located merely in areas inspired by northwestern Europe, but also includes Mediterranean as well.

Searching for quotes, I found a collection of "geographical" quotes of Tolkien:

_The action of the story takes place in the North-west of ‘Middle-earth’, equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean…. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy (Letters, no. 294 from March 1968).

Hobbiton is assumed to be approx at latitude of Oxford. The green vertical line is marked at distances of 100 miles (2cms to map scale). So you can roughly judge the climate and Fauna/Flora etc. Minas Tirith is about a latitude of Ravenna (but is 900 miles east of Hobbiton, more near Belgrade). Bottom of the map (1400 miles) is about a lattitude of Jerusalem. Umbar & City of Corsairs –about that of Cypres. green horizontal is also marked in 100 mile intervals.

If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence._

And also found this collection of related trivia:

_In a letter to his publishers, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote that The Shire - home to the "little people" better known as hobbits - was "more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of [Queen Victoria's] Diamond Jubilee" in 1897.

In a newspaper interview Tolkien fondly recalled the area, saying the Shire was "inspired by a few cherished square miles of actual countryside at Sarehole".

Following an Italian holiday in 1955, Tolkien, somewhat light-heartedly, referred to Venice as Gondor. However, this was after he had written Lord of the Rings. He also wrote that Gondor's power to build "the gigantic and massive" resembled the ancient Egyptians._

As well as transcription of annotated map of Middle Earth which also has some interesting parts (although already disclosed above):


https://cutewallpaper.org/21/full-maps-of-middle-earth/Tolkiens-annotated-map-of-Middle-earth-transcribed-The-.jpg


- Hobbiton is at latitude of Oxford
- Minas Tirith is near latitude of Ravenna, but to the east
- Umbar is latitude of Cyprus

This "latitude of Florence/Ravenna, but to the east" might suggest Belgrade, as Constantinople is farther south. In fact, mountains to east of Belgrade have a squarish shape, rather similar to Mordor. Very definitely not Northern Europe.

Although by searching for this stuff, I found out another interesting thing: some of geographic features of Gondor and Mordor are inspired by India and areas near it:








The Tale of the annotated map and Tolkien's hidden riddles - آردا، دنیای تالکین


این مقاله به فارسی نیز وجود دارد. در اینجا آن را مطالعه نمایید. Written by Mohammad Reza Kamali- Edited by Allacin Morimizu- In 2015 the world was thrilled to learn that a map of Middle-earth with notes by Professor J. R. R. Tolkien for illustrator Pauline Baynes was discovered in a copy of The...




arda.ir




But when you look at general shape of northwestern Middle Earth, it is clearly inspired by underwater geography of Atlantic ocean:


https://www.freeworldmaps.net/ocean/atlantic/atlantic-ocean-geography.jpg



Now, all of these pertain purely to geography, but they do show that geography does not, in fact, argue against the possibility of Gondor being (in part) inspired by Byzantium. Rather, it very much argues _for_ such a possibility (as well as several _other_ possibilities besides).

Well, regardless whether anyone changes their opinion due to this discussion or not, I'm quite sure it will have been a good learning experience for everyone involved.


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## Olorgando

I'll put it this way:
You have amassed quite a bit of circumstantial evidence; though there may be other circumstantial evidence that you missed, as an attorney for the defense would point out, which weakens a prosecutor's argument (the prosecution side in some countries does not quite "miss" such "unwelcome" evidence, not to put it in harsher terms).
The easiest solution for the prosecution would be the "defendant's" confession. This we definitely do not have, as I see it.
But just circumstantial evidence is not enough. There are the matters of opportunity and motive.
Opportunity should have been quite sufficient at a university of Oxford's standing; though again I see a possible issue with even Oxford not having all the information that you were able to research, as it simply did not exist at the time.
But my most serious doubts stem from motive: I don't believe JRRT was that interested in history unless it cast a light of philology. And JRRT quite clearly was a philologist with a focus on English and its close neighbors spoken in northern Germany and Scandinavia, the latter very much including Iceland. Even in the time he was (not really) studying "Classics", the Greek side of it would very probably have been "pre-Macedonian", so at least a good deal more than half a millennium before anything which could be called "Byzantine".
(An aside: do we have any inkling during what time frame the "Eastern Roman" empire morphed into the "Byzantine" one?)

Tom Shippey had the opportunity, as he mentions in the preface to the second edition of 1992, of receiving a letter from JRRT dated 13 April 1970, commenting on an essay Shippey had submitted to JRRT for critique. The essay would, more than a decade later, become, or at least become part of, his 1982 first edition of "The Road to Middle-earth". Shippey notes that it took him quite a while, basically up to the publication of the 1992 second edition, to "get" some of the gently put criticisms by JRRT, as they were put quite obliquely.
I hypothesize your being able to submit your essay to JRRT for similar critique. Well, I can definitely imagine JRRT commenting on quite a few of your details with "You don't say! I never knew that about the Byzantine Empire." 😜

So I see you mass of circumstantial evidence foundering on the rocks of motive. I could also imagine JRRT, while being bemused at the "primary inspiration" you assume him to have had, to allow you to have your personal applicability of Gondor to the Byzantine Empire. I certainly won't be visualizing Gondorians as Byzantines. Not to be wondered, I really can't even visualize the *Byzantines* as Byzantines! If I were to be given a multiple-choice test with pictures of clothing, armor, weapons, jewelry, architecture and whatnot with the goal of picking out what the Byzantine one was (in a European context), I would probably fail miserably. This may be one area where PJ, or rather the Weta Workshop crew (when not pushed in wrong directions by PJ), responsible for so much of the background atmosphere that I found fitting at least for the LoTR films, may now be my (by now already a bit dim) visualization of Gondor (and much else - Hobbiton!).


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## Aldarion

Olorgando said:


> I'll put it this way:
> You have amassed quite a bit of circumstantial evidence; though there may be other circumstantial evidence that you missed, as an attorney for the defense would point out, which weakens a prosecutor's argument (the prosecution side in some countries does not quite "miss" such "unwelcome" evidence, not to put it in harsher terms).
> The easiest solution for the prosecution would be the "defendant's" confession. This we definitely do not have, as I see it.
> But just circumstantial evidence is not enough. There are the matters of opportunity and motive.
> Opportunity should have been quite sufficient at a university of Oxford's standing; though again I see a possible issue with even Oxford not having all the information that you were able to research, as it simply did not exist at the time.
> But my most serious doubts stem from motive: I don't believe JRRT was that interested in history unless it cast a light of philology. And JRRT quite clearly was a philologist with a focus on English and its close neighbors spoken in northern Germany and Scandinavia, the latter very much including Iceland. Even in the time he was (not really) studying "Classics", the Greek side of it would very probably have been "pre-Macedonian", so at least a good deal more than half a millennium before anything which could be called "Byzantine".
> (An aside: do we have any inkling during what time frame the "Eastern Roman" empire morphed into the "Byzantine" one?)
> 
> Tom Shippey had the opportunity, as he mentions in the preface to the second edition of 1992, of receiving a letter from JRRT dated 13 April 1970, commenting on an essay Shippey had submitted to JRRT for critique. The essay would, more than a decade later, become, or at least become part of, his 1982 first edition of "The Road to Middle-earth". Shippey notes that it took him quite a while, basically up to the publication of the 1992 second edition, to "get" some of the gently put criticisms by JRRT, as they were put quite obliquely.
> I hypothesize your being able to submit your essay to JRRT for similar critique. Well, I can definitely imagine JRRT commenting on quite a few of your details with "You don't say! I never knew that about the Byzantine Empire." 😜
> 
> So I see you mass of circumstantial evidence foundering on the rocks of motive. I could also imagine JRRT, while being bemused at the "primary inspiration" you assume him to have had, to allow you to have your personal applicability of Gondor to the Byzantine Empire. I certainly won't be visualizing Gondorians as Byzantines. Not to be wondered, I really can't even visualize the *Byzantines* as Byzantines! If I were to be given a multiple-choice test with pictures of clothing, armor, weapons, jewelry, architecture and whatnot with the goal of picking out what the Byzantine one was (in a European context), I would probably fail miserably. This may be one area where PJ, or rather the Weta Workshop crew (when not pushed in wrong directions by PJ), responsible for so much of the background atmosphere that I found fitting at least for the LoTR films, may now be my (by now already a bit dim) visualization of Gondor (and much else - Hobbiton!).



Problem with opportunity and motive is that we simply cannot know anything about opportunities and motives which JRRT had unless he disclosed them himself. Which, for the most part, he did not. However, late 19th and early 20th century _is _the time of development of Byzantine studies as an independent discipline. Karl Hopf, Vasiliy Vasilievski both started writing about Byzantine history long before Tolkien started writing _Lord of the Rings_. Opportunity was there.

Going back to motives, we do know that Tolkien was interested in Goths: Vidugavia is a clearly Gothic-ish name. And eastern Romans had a long, and varied, history with Goths, going from Third to Sixth centuries, and ranging from war, to alliance, to war.... Battle of Pelennor is likely inspired by Battle of Cataluanian Fields, which while happening in the West was merely an outcome of a series of events _heavily_ involving the Eastern Roman Empire. And even beyond history, Tolkien's interest did extend to Southern Europe: he was also versed in the Bible and the Greek mythology.

I do not think Tolkien was "only interested in history if it cast a light of philology". Philology might have been his primary interest, but his worldbuilding is too deep for him not to have interest in history beyond that. Tolkien's works also display the understanding of military organization and logistics which most other fantasy works do not have: there is literally nothing that human armies do in his books which could not have been done by a corresponding historical army. Reason why Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul are so close together is because otherwise Witch King's assault would have been impossible. And his descriptions of war preparations - be in preparations of Ar-Pharazon, of the Last Alliance, or awareness of need and frequency of last-ditch repairs to defences before a siege (Helm's Deep and Rammas Echor both get such repairs) show a deep understanding of medieval military operations which is simply lacking in most of today's fantasy authors. That is not something mere interest in philology could provide.

EDIT: RE: VIsualizations, Tolkien almost certainly did not intend for Gondorians to be visualized as Byzantines. Byzantines were pretty much the heirs of antiquity. And while Renaissance (and many people today) had an image of "pearly white" Antiquity, reality was quite a bit different. Antiquity was not white; rather, it was very colourful - just as Middle Ages were also rather colourful instead of being all beiges-and-browns. But Gondor is typically described as associated to bichrome of black and white (I imagine living there would be a bit like watching an old TV!). There are no colours there, so at "first look" at least, you would not associate them with Byzantium.
EDIT2: Found this on architecture:


https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=journaloftolkienresearch



EDIT: RE: An aside, that depends. Byzantines never called themselves such, they always considered themselves Romans. But for historians, there are several possible "morphing" points: final fall of Western Roman Empire (which fell with pretty much a whisper, so when _that_ happened can vary by some century at least), replacement of Latin language with Greek one under Justinian, or Arab conquests which destroyed (what was left of) ancient civilization and brought Europe - Byzantium included - into Middle Ages.


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## Deleted member 12094

Happy to see an in-depth discussion (finally…!) about the Byzantine comparison. This reading gets ever more interesting!

A side-issue (meaning it may nag just me personally) is Aldarion’s earlier quote he gave as JRRT’s “confirmation” for the “Gondor=Byzantium” hypothesis:



Aldarion said:


> This is the full paragraph. It comes from the "Reader's Companion", "EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN TO MILTON WALDMAN, ?LATE 1951, ON THE LORD OF THE RINGS":
> _The Fifth Book returns to the precise point at which Book Three ended. Gandalf on his great horse (with the Hobbit Peregrin Took) passing along the great 'north-road', South to Gondor. *Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith*, and meet its grim lord, the old proud wizard-like Steward, Denethor. He prepares for war and hopeless siege. The last levies from the remaining fiefs march in. The great darkness comes. The Nazgul ride the air, cowing all hearts. Slowly the assault begins and mounts in fire and terror. Denethor commits suicide. The Sorcerer-King, Captain of the Black Riders, overthrows the 'unbreakable' gates of the City. Gandalf alone is left to face him. _



This quote is not mentioned in the following books:

“The Letters of JRR Tolkien” compiled by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien
“The J. R.R.Tolkien Companion & Guide”(both “Chronology” and “Reader’s Guide”) by Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, published 2006.
“The J. R.R.Tolkien Companion & Guide – Reader’s Guide” Parts I and II, by Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, published 2017.
“The Tolkien Companion” by JEA Tyler
“The Road to Middle-Earth” by Tom Shippey (an edition from 2012)
“Critical Companion to JRR Tolkien” by Jay Ruud (2011 edition)
“The complete Guide to Middle-Earth” by R. Foster (1993 edition)
Regarding the first one (the “Letters”), it does include the mentioned letter (it's under number 131), but there can be a doubt if it was reproduced there in full (it was a very long letter).

Nonetheless, and unless I overlooked it: none of these sources includes this quote, although some of these are quite extensive and eminent works (in fact, none of them supports the “Gondor=Byzantium“ hypothesis in any way).

Could anyone specify which is the source of that quote…?


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## Olorgando

Merroe said:


> Aldarion said:
> 
> 
> 
> This is the full paragraph. It comes from the "Reader's Companion", "EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN TO MILTON WALDMAN, ?LATE 1951, ON THE LORD OF THE RINGS":
> 
> 
> 
> This quote is not mentioned in the following books:
> Could anyone specify which is the source of that quote…?
Click to expand...

What Aldarion means is the Hammond / Scull 2005 "The Lord of The Rings - A Reader's Companion", not to be found in your above list. What is included in the chapter bearing exactly the title Aldarion cited is the part in JRRT's letter to Waldman about LoTR which is skipped over in Carpenter's "Letters" with those ominous three dots. It starts on page 742 of the H-S book, what Aldarion quoted is to be found on the second half of page 746. 100% score for Aldarion here.
@Aldarion : That I can be stubborn as a mule should no longer surprise you. I repeat what I stated above:
"Not to be wondered, I really can't even visualize the *Byzantines* as Byzantines!" 😜
But I have another quibble that I will address in a separate post. 🤨


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## Deleted member 12094

Olorgando said:


> What Aldarion means is the Hammond / Scull 2005 "The Lord of The Rings - A Reader's Companion", not to be found in your above list. What is included in the chapter bearing exactly the title Aldarion cited is the part in JRRT's letter to Waldman about LoTR which is skipped over in Carpenter's "Letters" with those ominous three dots. It starts on page 742 of the H-S book, what Aldarion quoted is to be found on the second half of page 746. 100% score for Aldarion here.



Thanks - I finally found it now! Great discussions.


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## Olorgando

Aldarion said:


> *I do not think Tolkien was "only interested in history if it cast a light of philology"*. Philology might have been his primary interest, but his worldbuilding is too deep for him not to have interest in history beyond that. *Tolkien's works also display the understanding of military organization and logistics which most other fantasy works do not have: there is literally nothing that human armies do in his books which could not have been done by a corresponding historical army.* Reason why Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul are so close together is because otherwise Witch King's assault would have been impossible. And his descriptions of war preparations - be in preparations of Ar-Pharazon, of the Last Alliance, or awareness of need and frequency of last-ditch repairs to defences before a siege (Helm's Deep and Rammas Echor both get such repairs) show a deep understanding of medieval military operations which is simply lacking in most of today's fantasy authors. That is not something mere interest in philology could provide.


As to the first part I highlighted, I think JRRT's lecture (and later paper) "The Monsters and the Critics" on Beowulf very much shows him as dealing very severely with historians who had wailed "why did the Beowulf poet not give us more on Ingeld and all the rest that we are interested in?!?" To compress JRRT's answer (in a language he would certainly not have approved of) "The Beowulf post didn't give a shit about any (including your) whiny nagging. Get a reality check, he was writing a friggin' Fairy Story (for adults - I have called LoTR the Beowulf for our days), and if you are looking for other things, you are simply totally daft!".
This is, I would guess, perhaps limited to his "professional" interest (but JRRT never really, for himself, divided "profession" and "hobby" (a term that is much too weak for Middle-earth).

As to JRRT's understanding military, yes, he had the extremely dubious "privilege" of experiencing the horrific (for both sides) Battle of the Somme of mid-1916. And as John Garth in his "Tolkien and the Great War" wrote, he went practically everywhere on foot while near the front. Now I do not wish, retrospectively, that other writers of Fantasy (or the Fantastic) should have had such horrific first-hand experience (Shippey mentions Orwell being almost fatally wounded in the Spanish Civil War, or Vonnegut being in Dresden when it was annihilated by bombing in 1945). But I have, to the contrary, often had the impression that JRRT gave little thought to the issue of supply lines and auxiliaries (certainly on the side of the baddies who seemed to be able to throw limitless troops into battle without the slightest regard to supply logistics).

But you post "Reason why Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul are so close together is because otherwise Witch King's assault would have been impossible." Going either by Christopher's map in my 2002 hardcover edition of LoTR, or Karen Wynn Fonstad's "Atlas", that would appear to be a distance of a bit over 40 miles, or around 65 kilometers. If greater distance seems to you "impossible", what am I to make of the distance of over 150 miles or 240 kilometers (by CRT's map) or over 170 miles or almost 280 kilometers by Fonstad's map? I have searched (unsuccessfully - have I ever mentioned that you can be annoying [a comment my wife and I bandy about back-and-forth regularly]) for a post of yours where you give the extreme limit of any non-fossil-fuel-using military unit, including draft animals, at 300 - I think it was kilometers. Unopposed, I'd guess.

No, JRRT was not involved with logistics in WW I (nor was he, luckily for him as a subaltern officer, a second lieutenant, leader of a platoon, unlike his TCBS friend R.Q. Gilson, killed on the very first day of The Somme, 01 July 1916). And if there is anything that JRRT detested more than industrialization, it would be its application to warfare. Not that he approved much of more ancient warfare. His "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son" is a scathing indictment of the dark, negative side of the "Theory of Northern Courage" that some simplemindedly may have thought him to have endorsed without qualification. I think you are again taking circumstantial evidence beyond what it actually supports.


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## Aldarion

Olorgando said:


> As to the first part I highlighted, I think JRRT's lecture (and later paper) "The Monsters and the Critics" on Beowulf very much shows him as dealing very severely with historians who had wailed "why did the Beowulf poet not give us more on Ingeld and all the rest that we are interested in?!?" To compress JRRT's answer (in a language he would certainly not have approved of) "The Beowulf post didn't give a shit about any (including your) whiny nagging. Get a reality check, he was writing a friggin' Fairy Story (for adults - I have called LoTR the Beowulf for our days), and if you are looking for other things, you are simply totally daft!".
> This is, I would guess, perhaps limited to his "professional" interest (but JRRT never really, for himself, divided "profession" and "hobby" (a term that is much too weak for Middle-earth).



And he did show rather dismissive attitude towards people who were nagging him about details which he did not feel like developing - and he himself did not really consider a lot of things, such as day-to-day logistics of Minas Tirith (seven gates in seven walls are _not_ enough for a city of size implied for it to survive - it would require seven gates just in main wall), Moria (where do dwarves grow food?) or Mordor (there are no rivers - how do they get food from Sea of Nurnen to Barad-dur - that is some 200 miles!). But though he might have disliked warfare, it _does_ form a major aspect of his work, and it is rather unlikely he half-arsed it.



> As to JRRT's understanding military, yes, he had the extremely dubious "privilege" of experiencing the horrific (for both sides) Battle of the Somme of mid-1916. And as John Garth in his "Tolkien and the Great War" wrote, he went practically everywhere on foot while near the front. Now I do not wish, retrospectively, that other writers of Fantasy (or the Fantastic) should have had such horrific first-hand experience (Shippey mentions Orwell being almost fatally wounded in the Spanish Civil War, or Vonnegut being in Dresden when it was annihilated by bombing in 1945). But I have, to the contrary, often had the impression that JRRT gave little thought to the issue of supply lines and auxiliaries (certainly on the side of the baddies who seemed to be able to throw limitless troops into battle without the slightest regard to supply logistics).



His understanding of military is unlikely to be limited to merely his experiences in World War I. In fact, said experiences - though they _heavily_ inform Tolkien's work at some points (most obviously Dead Marshes and Siege of Minas Tirith) - would be of naturally limited utility in understanding medieval warfare, military organization and logistics. But if memory serves me, Anglo-Saxon epics (I have not really read any, though, so going by tertiary sources here) are rather warfare-oriented. Studying them, as Tolkien did, would naturally lead person to develop significant level of understanding of warfare as was waged at the time - much like studying Croatian heroic ballads will lead one to develop rather deep understanding of life (mostly warfare) on Croatian-Ottoman border. But I do believe he might have done research on stuff beyond what could be gleamed merely from epics themselves. I just can't know that.



> But you post "Reason why Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul are so close together is because otherwise Witch King's assault would have been impossible." Going either by Christopher's map in my 2002 hardcover edition of LoTR, or Karen Wynn Fonstad's "Atlas", that would appear to be a distance of a bit over 40 miles, or around 65 kilometers. If greater distance seems to you "impossible", what am I to make of the distance of over 150 miles or 240 kilometers (by CRT's map) or over 170 miles or almost 280 kilometers by Fonstad's map? I have searched (unsuccessfully - have I ever mentioned that you can be annoying [a comment my wife and I bandy about back-and-forth regularly]) for a post of yours where you give the extreme limit of any non-fossil-fuel-using military unit, including draft animals, at 300 - I think it was kilometers. Unopposed, I'd guess.



Infantry army can march 10-12 miles a day and carry roughly 10 days of supply on person. Wagon train and presence of the fleet (as noted Mordor was building in Osgilliath) would _significantly_ increase that distance - but only within range of waterways. So what matters here is not actually distance of Minas Tirith to Minas Morgul, but rather of Minas Morgul to Osgilliath and then of Osgilliath to Minas Tirith. Regardless of what exact numbers you use, fact still remains that Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul are *extremely close*. Compare =<170 miles Minas Tirith - Morgul distance to 1 000 miles from Constantinople to Baghdad, or 500 miles from Constantinople to Byzantine border in 9th century. And there were military expeditions in premodern times mounted over distances much, much longer than those. Of course, those were armies which relied either on fleet train or on foraging.

Overall, logistics work even with Fonstad's setup (assuming 120 miles Minas Morgul to Osgilliath) but are at the outer bounds of possible with infantry army - and pretty much explain why Witch King opted for an assault instead of circumvallation of the city. In fact, in such a view destruction of Rammas Echor can be explained by the necessity to minimize obstructions to whatever resupply scheme Morgul forces had managed to set up, rather than by sheer hatred (though former probably wouldn't require complete destruction of the wall).

Regarding my post, I couldn't find it, but I did find my calculations on Mythic Scribes forum (I think I used Roman, not English, miles in the post):





Army organization, recruitment and logistics


ARMY UNITS Army units are organized to ranks to level fo five or ten soldiers. Legion (legio, meros) Each legion is assigned one province which supports it; legate is also the highest authority in the province. Prescribed number is four cohorts of cavalry and infantry each, for a total of 800...



mythicscribes.com




Basically:

Infantryman can carry 14 - 17 days of supply with himself at most, though as noted more usual number is 10 days. All-infantry army can cover some 8-12 miles per day. So distance is some 80 - 120 miles (130 - 200 km), or 120 - 180 miles (200 - 290 km) at the outside.
Mule can *carry* around 14-15 days of supplies - with most of supplies going to mule, of course. This would overall require around 1-2 mules per soldier, and allow army to reach 350 km.
Mules puling wagon would easily incrase this distance to 700 km (420 miles) at least, but would require more than four weeks to cover that distance (25 km / 15 miles per day). If you are willing to go to above extreme (majority, that is cca 3/4 of wagon space going to mule fodder), you can increase distance to 8 weeks or 1 400 km, but that would require *massive* number of mules.
Overall, distance from Minas Morgul to Osgilliath can be covered with a _lot_ of fodder being left over with either pack mules or mule-pulled wagons. And if Osgilliath is used as a forward supply base, then siege of Minas Tirith is relatively easy to set up, logistically speaking. What is _not _easy is moving deeper into Gondor - which is why Minas Tirith needs to be taken (beyond its political and symbolic significance) - it can serve as a supply base (especially if granaries are taken intact) and at very least it opens up Osgilliath supply route.



> No, JRRT was not involved with logistics in WW I (nor was he, luckily for him as a subaltern officer, a second lieutenant, leader of a platoon, unlike his TCBS friend R.Q. Gilson, killed on the very first day of The Somme, 01 July 1916). And if there is anything that JRRT detested more than industrialization, it would be its application to warfare. Not that he approved much of more ancient warfare. His "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son" is a scathing indictment of the dark, negative side of the "Theory of Northern Courage" that some simplemindedly may have thought him to have endorsed without qualification. I think you are again taking circumstantial evidence beyond what it actually supports.



I have never linked his logistical knowledge to his service in World War I. Logistics in Lord of the Rings are very much medieval. But they do exist, and they play a *significant* role in shaping the events:

Faramir notes that Witch King had spent time building and massing barges in eastern Osgilliath before assault.
Osgilliath is the key because only there can Anduin be crossed - which is important both for assault itself and for resupply of Sauron's army.
Witch King decides on assault on Minas Tirith due to a) possible reinforcements arriving and b) logistical concerns (Mordor's army is huge)
First thing Numenoreans do when going back to Middle Earth is to secure ports for resupply. First thing Sauron does is to attemt to deny them these ports.
Feanor causes kinslaying because he knows how much easier it is to cross ocean in ships.
One of Sauron's more important successes was his capture of Umbar - fact that he apparently spent a _lot_ of time and manpower on that shows that he had finally understood importance of sea control.
And logistics are not connected to industrialization. Army of Flintstones and assorted cavemen is just as dependant on logistics as a modern mechanized army - though logistics themselves are completely different, of course.

If Tolkien had had Sauron ignore logistics like he was in late-show _Game of Thrones_, Sauron would have just marched an army around Ered Mithrin and Ettenmoors into Rivendell. But he didn't, so Sauron couldn't.



Olorgando said:


> @Aldarion : That I can be stubborn as a mule should no longer surprise you. I repeat what I stated above:
> "Not to be wondered, I really can't even visualize the *Byzantines* as Byzantines!" 😜
> But I have another quibble that I will address in a separate post. 🤨



Stubborness is good. Makes for good discussion.


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## Olorgando

Aldarion said:


> ...
> And even beyond history, Tolkien's interest did extend to Southern Europe: he was also versed in the Bible and the Greek mythology.
> ...


Extend, probably. But I would guess somewhat peripheral . The Greek Mythology that may have interested him is, by nature, to him a *heathen* mythology as was that (little) to be discovered in the Eddas and Norse Sagas about Norse Mythology (far less than most people realize, and very late compared to what the "Germanii" may have believed in in comparison to Julius C.'s time). Byzantium (as I need not tell you) was Christian. Which leads me to ...

As to Bible, he was not a theologian, as he stated more than once. And as he also more than once stated a preference for pre-Vatican-II-Council Catholicism, while one of the decisive statements by V II was about recognizing the other Christian churches - Wiki: "Notably, [Pope Paul VI's] meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in 1964 in Jerusalem led to rescinding the excommunications of the Great Schism, which took place in 1054." After a mere 910 years ...
I don't think JRRT ever mentioned anything about his views on the Eastern Orthodox Church (he was busy enough dealing with that "Ultonian Church of Englander" C.S. Lewis 😁), though he may possibly have had a slightly more benign attitude towards them - when he thought about them at all - than towards those Lutheran / Calvinist / etc. "heretics". (The EOs, by the way, basically considered all Catholics to be heretics - among other things that "filoque" issue ...).

And what JRRT thought of "textual criticism" (or more neutral analysis) of the Bible is another thing I do not have an idea about (though this is one subject I have read quite a lot about). One item being reversing the order in the New Testament "Matthew, Mark, ...", as scholars believe to be able to show that Mark's writings are the older. Or the division into four hypothesized "sources" for the Old Testament (Hebrew Tanakh) into "Yahwist", "Elohist", "Deuteronomist", and "Priestly" sources.

JRRT's Catholicism, as he pointed out several times, was the "Roman" one (there are others, one splitting off after the Vatican I promulgation of Papal infallibility, others much older - but all certainly massively dwarfed by Rome). That would be Augustinian (Augustine being the first of the Latin "Fathers" of the Church, all previous ones, such as Origines, having written in Greek). I would say neither his Roman Catholicism nor his interest in "pagan" Greek Mythology - or philosophy, be it Socrates, Plato, or Aristoteles - points towards Byzantium.

(I must complain to our forum wizard mazzly: there is only a boring horse in the selection of the "Smilies" button, certainly not anything to be unequivocally to be identified as a mule - or as you might prefer, a donkey. 🤪)

_*sigh*_

"Not to be wondered, I really can't even visualize the *Byzantines* as Byzantines!"

_(*insert mule's bray here*)_


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## Alcuin

I’m glad this thread has cooled down a bit.

I’ve read “Gondor as a pre-Byzantium” speculation on the web since the late 1990s, when Tolkien articles and essays first began to appear on the internet and I could search for them. Olorgando beat me to the punch on the long section in _Reader’s Companion_, which is now lying open on my desk.

A few points here:
Tolkien was _very much_ aware of ancient warfare and of the history of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empire: It was an essential part of his profession as a philologist. Philology is not merely linguistics, but languages _in their contexts as history_. The continual invasions of both Rome and Constantinople by northern and eastern peoples were of critical interest to Tolkien: the first language he learned as a young teenager was Visigothic, if I recall correctly, the language of invaders who overthrew Roman government in the western Mediterranean. He was also well-versed in the battles, tactics, and strategies of wars in the Classical, Dark, and Middle Ages, as shows in his writing. 
The sheer horrors of World War I did inspire much of Tolkien’s descriptions of Mordor, the Dead Marshes (in No-man’s Land on the Western Front, the bodies of the dead could be seen beneath greasy pools: sometimes the skin of the dead would come loose from their faces and float to the tops of the pools), and the desert of Dagorlad before the Black Gates. But he was even more horrified by the enormous evil personified in Hitler and Stalin, the utter destruction of the atomic bombs, and the demonization of soldiers in the armies of the enemies of Britain. Though these last three evils became apparent during World War II (and demonization of the Germans in particular was absolutely an element of World War I propaganda as well), Tolkien says they did not play a role in the development of _Lord of the Rings_.
It is all too easy to become overwrought when one’s dearly-beloved beliefs are challenged or contradicted. Do I not know this all too well myself! We do well to remember that all participants on the board do not concur with our deeply-held beliefs. And in saying this, some of you may find, if you look, that I publicly ripped into another board member many years ago: But in my defense, it was because he had been belittling others for their beliefs, while his own dear idiosyncratic and contradictory holdings were built on shaky sand: exposing and undermining them was all too easy! 
There _are_ differences between men and women: that’s a _fact_, not speculation or opinion. The French used loudly to proclaim _Vive la difference!_ and the rest of Western Civilization laughed and repeated it with gusto. Today, Western Civilization is crumbling, literally burning, the Gramscian damage of nearly a century of Marxist lies and propaganda. Tolkien objected to changes in the Roman liturgy, according to his grandson Simon, who reported that
[I]t was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My Grandfather obviously didn’t agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but my Grandfather was oblivious.​We can well imagine what the old Professor would have thought of the current state of affairs at his beloved Oxford, and its obsequious obeisance to the inane prattlings of Critical Theory with its idiotic Marxist underpinnings: he would definitely _not_ approve, nor should we imagine his opinions of its practitioners be in any way complimentary.
That said, I do agree that Minas Tirith is in many ways a reflection of Constantinople, and Gondor in many ways is a “foreshadowing” (if we may use so strong a term as to presume a _fictional_ land foreshadows a great and illustrious realm in the real world of men) of Byzantium. I think the conclusion that Tolkien used that pattern to build Minas Tirith and Gondor is unmistakable, as the fracturing of Arnor reflects the fracturing of the Western Empire; but there are a great wealth other examples upon which he also drew to build his subcreation of Middle-earth. He knew them all, and used them, drawing water from a deep well of history and literature that almost breathes life into his mythos. 

I am not certain to which reference in _Reader’s Companion_ Olorgando and Aldarion refer. The passage of the “half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith” is originally from Tolkien’s long letter to Milton Waldman, the longest in _Letters of JRR Tolkien_; but in my 2005 edition of _Reader’s Companion_, on its pages 569-571, referencing _LotR_ page 848 and _RotK_ page 124 (as “*848 (III:124)*”), Hammond and Scull comment,
After periods of great power and glory, by 1453 the Byzantine Empire had lost most of its territories and was facing the growing power of invaders from the east, the Ottoman Turks. Tolkien himself recognized the parallels between this and the once great Númenórean realms in exile. He wrote to Milton Waldman in ?late 1951: “But in the north Arnor dwindles ... and finally vanishes. In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium. …”​


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## Aldarion

Olorgando said:


> Extend, probably. But I would guess somewhat peripheral . The Greek Mythology that may have interested him is, by nature, to him a *heathen* mythology as was that (little) to be discovered in the Eddas and Norse Sagas about Norse Mythology (far less than most people realize, and very late compared to what the "Germanii" may have believed in in comparison to Julius C.'s time). Byzantium (as I need not tell you) was Christian. Which leads me to ...



I am not suggesting that he was interested in _Byzantine mythology_, but that his interest was not limited just to Northern Europe, despite what some - even some of his own statements - may suggest (and what you, in fact, have suggested - context!). And if he was interested in Southern Europe _and_ potential clash of civilizations (as suggested by his East vs West dychtonomy, with Sauron controlling East - he was originally in Rhun before he moved to Mordor - and Numenoreans controlling the West), then Byzantium would have been an _unavoidable _reading.



Olorgando said:


> As to Bible, he was not a theologian, as he stated more than once. And as he also more than once stated a preference for pre-Vatican-II-Council Catholicism, while one of the decisive statements by V II was about recognizing the other Christian churches - Wiki: "Notably, [Pope Paul VI's] meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in 1964 in Jerusalem led to rescinding the excommunications of the Great Schism, which took place in 1054." After a mere 910 years ...
> I don't think JRRT ever mentioned anything about his views on the Eastern Orthodox Church (he was busy enough dealing with that "Ultonian Church of Englander" C.S. Lewis 😁), though he may possibly have had a slightly more benign attitude towards them - when he thought about them at all - than towards those Lutheran / Calvinist / etc. "heretics". (The EOs, by the way, basically considered all Catholics to be heretics - among other things that "filoque" issue ...).



You do not need to be theologian to be "versed" in the Bible. And I do not see why him being a Catholic would prevent him from appreciating Byzantine Empire which did, after all, save Western civilization, Catholicism included. In fact, Boromir's little "shield of the West" speech could well have been given by any of various Byzantine Emperors between 7th and 15th centuries (or even earlier...).



Olorgando said:


> JRRT's Catholicism, as he pointed out several times, was the "Roman" one (there are others, one splitting off after the Vatican I promulgation of Papal infallibility, others much older - but all certainly massively dwarfed by Rome). That would be Augustinian (Augustine being the first of the Latin "Fathers" of the Church, all previous ones, such as Origines, having written in Greek). I would say neither his Roman Catholicism nor his interest in "pagan" Greek Mythology - or philosophy, be it Socrates, Plato, or Aristoteles - points towards Byzantium.



I do not see why his theological interests are relevant to his historical ones. Nothing he has written points towards India either, yet geography of Gondor and Mordor is based - in part at least - on areas of British India and Tibet, as shown in the link I had provided already.


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## Olorgando

I remain convinced that far more points away from the Byzantine Empire than points towards it, and I will only accept it as a "primary" inspiration of his for Gondor if a "confession" of his in writing is found.

I mentioned the possibility above that JRRT might have taken very varied sources for what he wrote, that in retrospect seem to "tick all the boxes" for the Byzantine Empire, while any of the possible sources would fail to do so. Aldarion considered that to be unlikely. Well, I've got news for you. Even if something is statistically improbable by 90% to 10% (or even in lottery ticket improbabilities going into three-digit millions), the 10% can still happen. As "intuitive statisticians", we humans are about the dumbest species in the world, even ants are better. And when we believe we have found a "causality" (something we seem to have a massively neurotic need for), we start taking notice only of what confirms this. There is perhaps nothing more daft that humans' "ability" to recognize "faces" where the similarity for "non-believers" tends towards zero. We're not nearly as smart as we think ourselves to be. We desperately search for "causality" and believe to find it far more often (by orders of magnitude!) than dispassionate observers would nod to. We are less hungry for "correlation", which seems to confuse many of us. And we just absolutely hate "coincidence", even though it is the 9000-pound gorilla of the three, dwarfing the other two.


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## Hisoka Morrow

I think, all Aldarion lacks is nothing but very very very accurate words...for too many fantasy authors seldom, and even never express their elements of inspiration, though they're obviously unnecessary for any account to guess. For instance. Bunches of Louis Cha Leung-yung's characters like Qiao Feng in Demi gods and Semi devils, even never mentioned his source, yet as a role with such obviously similar elements with some big guy in real history, it'd be a ultimate insult to the readers's judgement XDDDDDD

Back to business, I think according to all the elements that Gondor got, it's a piece of cake to guess who're the inspiration of it's source, such as standing armed forces, cross-road in the international commercial trade transport lines in a Medieval-Fantasy backgrounds...yeah, if it's not based on Byzantine mainly, I'd like to know...


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## Deleted member 12094

My view on this topic has grown wider, thanks to the exchanges in this tread.

Comparisons are intellectually very interesting. They only go as far as they can go.

Alcuin, Olorgando and Aldarion correctly pointed out that there are many comparable aspects between Byzantium and Gondor, and yet also some contradictions.

My point here is that the existence of many comparable aspects does not justify the statement “Gondor=Byzantium”, meaning that _igitur_ everything in Gondor is a mere Byzantine copy. Yet, this was noticed in a number of previous treads (the political structure, the government, the military tactics, the tax system, the administration, …). There have been exaggerations of this, repeatedly so. And then it becomes fanfic, IMHO.

In my possibly unhandy manner, that is what I tried to point out as my fundamental objection. It cannot be that everything JRRT has not said needs to be “explained” by the way it has supposedly been like in Byzantium.

The writings of JRRT: that is what matters at the end of the day.


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## Aldarion

Olorgando said:


> I remain convinced that far more points away from the Byzantine Empire than points towards it, and I will only accept it as a "primary" inspiration of his for Gondor if a "confession" of his in writing is found.



What exactly would you say points away from the Byzantine Empire, with particular focus on things within the text itself (meaning what we know and see of Gondor, as opposed to speculating on Tolkien's interests and knowledge of various areas)?



Olorgando said:


> I mentioned the possibility above that JRRT might have taken very varied sources for what he wrote, that in retrospect seem to "tick all the boxes" for the Byzantine Empire, while any of the possible sources would fail to do so. Aldarion considered that to be unlikely. Well, I've got news for you. Even if something is statistically improbable by 90% to 10% (or even in lottery ticket improbabilities going into three-digit millions), the 10% can still happen. As "intuitive statisticians", we humans are about the dumbest species in the world, even ants are better. And when we believe we have found a "causality" (something we seem to have a massively neurotic need for), we start taking notice only of what confirms this. There is perhaps nothing more daft that humans' "ability" to recognize "faces" where the similarity for "non-believers" tends towards zero. We're not nearly as smart as we think ourselves to be. We desperately search for "causality" and believe to find it far more often (by orders of magnitude!) than dispassionate observers would nod to. We are less hungry for "correlation", which seems to confuse many of us. And we just absolutely hate "coincidence", even though it is the 9000-pound gorilla of the three, dwarfing the other two.



I have never denied that Tolkien used very varied sources - as I pointed out, geography of Gondor appears to be based on British India. But as I _also _pointed out: if you have option of a) one main and few secondary inspirations which together tick all the boxes, b) several dozen minor inspirations which together tick all the boxes or c) just random happenstance, what option would you consider most likely? Personally, I would chose a).

Coincidence is actually very rare. What we call "coincidence" can mostly be translated to "inability to understand the relation" - which may be a direct causation, correlation, or a butterfly effect, but is _very rarely_ actually a coincidence. It is just that relation is often so complex that we are incapable of understanding it and thus it is simpler to slap things with "coincidence".


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## Olorgando

Coincidence - "co incident", happening at the same time.
But I then checked my Oxford University Press E-G / G-E Dictionary both ways and found this.
While English "coincidence" is mainly translated as German "Zufall", the other way around German "Zufall" (noun) and "zufällig" (adjective) can have the meanings chance, coincidence, accident, and luck, also random and fluke (while the verb "zufallen" has more to do with the unprefixed "fallen", to fall). And I've done almost all my reading about "Zufall" in German (and also about one of its almost-synonyms "Glück", which besides luck can also mean happiness; some German words do "multiple duty" which can give a translator fits).

I think it is the randomness of occurrences that most people find hard to accept. One part of it has to do with our being, as mentioned above, absolutely lousy *intuitive* statisticians, apparently especially with the concept of the large numbers (10 flips of the coin will not necessarily give you 50-50 heads and tails, but 10,000 flips of the coin should get you very close). Unfortunately this makes people susceptible to nutty conspiracy theories, and all sorts of esoteric nonsense, especially perpetrated by charlatans. And coincidence as being random occurrences are very common, not rare. Perhaps you are thinking of Laplace's demon, the first published articulation of causal or scientific determinism. From what little I understand about it, Bohr and Heisenberg's postulated indeterminacy (IIRC one of the things that put Einstein off later quantum theory, even though one of his famous 1905 papers dealt with quantum theory) sent this "demon" off to pasture (perhaps again, as thermodynamics seems to have done so earlier). So if you say "What we call "coincidence" can mostly be translated to "inability to understand the relation"", I would retort that we try (sometimes almost desperately) to *find* a relation where there is none.


Aldarion said:


> What exactly would you say points away from the Byzantine Empire, with particular focus on things within the text itself (meaning what we know and see of Gondor, as opposed to speculating on Tolkien's interests and knowledge of various areas)?


Here I have the problem of minimum knowledge of the Byzantine Empire. But as to speculation, that would have to do with what JRRT might have done, reading mostly, in his spare, private time. What he did professionally is no speculation at all: Old and Middle English, with an added specialization on Old Norse (or Old Icelandic), for 17 years as a reader and then a professor (chairholder) at Leeds and Oxford. As to what he did in his spare time, we also know at least one thing: writing, revising, re-writing the Silmarillion, and working on his two invented Elven languages. So while JRRT probably spent a bit of time on other things, we know little of them. And he certainly had some knowledge of Byzantium Though hardly from his classical studies before switching to the English School in 1913. I just don't se Byzantium looming as large in his imagination as you assume it to do (and it certainly seems to loom in yours).

I'll put it this way: inspiration? Yes. *Primary* inspiration? A flat no.
_(You may now imagine a stubborn mule braying in the background  )_


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## Aldarion

Olorgando said:


> Here I have the problem of minimum knowledge of the Byzantine Empire. But as to speculation, that would have to do with what JRRT might have done, reading mostly, in his spare, private time. What he did professionally is no speculation at all: Old and Middle English, with an added specialization on Old Norse (or Old Icelandic), for 17 years as a reader and then a professor (chairholder) at Leeds and Oxford. As to what he did in his spare time, we also know at least one thing: writing, revising, re-writing the Silmarillion, and working on his two invented Elven languages. So while JRRT probably spent a bit of time on other things, we know little of them. And he certainly had some knowledge of Byzantium Though hardly from his classical studies before switching to the English School in 1913. I just don't se Byzantium looming as large in his imagination as you assume it to do (and it certainly seems to loom in yours).



As I have pointed out, we have no way of knowing what Tolkien will have done in his private time, which is the only time when he could have actually researched Byzantium. But personally I find this focus on Tolkien's professional interests and opportunities rather misses the point. After all, whole work on Middle Earth was, for him, a private project made out of passion - he never actually intended to publish it (had to be convinced to). So searching for his inspiration and influences solely in his professional acitivies as a professor of linguistics is rather illogical.

I have already pointed out that he had the opportunity (Byzantine Studies as a discipline started developing in 19th century, but have history going back to 16th century, when term "Byzantium" was in fact coined), the means and arguably the motive to be interested in Byzantium; but whether he did it is impossible to establish for certain. Disucssing inspiration is always speculation. Silmarillion certainly shows no influences (however arguable) from Byzantine history; it is only Gondor and Arnor which appear to me to be inspired/influenced by Byzantine and Frankish Empires, respectively (and to reinforce this, Haradrim do appear to be inspired by Saracens, using scimitars for their cavalry and conquering Umbar - which itself may have been inspired by Alexandria or, more likely, Carthage).

I mean, from my own education you would not imagine me to have any knowledge of Byzantium beyond its role in protecting Europe from Arab and later Turkish expansion - unless you managed to find out that my undergraduate thesis was on Byzantine strategy, or specifically, possibilities of its application to modern world. And the reason for that was a wholly private interest in Byzantine Empire developed, as far as memory serves me, largely by accident (or not exactly by accident, seeing how I did have previous interest in Roman Empire of Antiquity). So having had that experience, I really cannot assign that much importance to Tolkien's professional record and interests as his sources of inspiration. They were significant, yes, but there is no need to assume that his interests were limited to his job. His interest in Atlantis and inspiration it served for Numenor is fairly uncontested, I believe.

Whether Byzantium is primary inspiration for Gondor can be discussed further. But personally I have trouble finding anything which could be. Egypt was the only _other_ inspiration for Gondor I am fairly certain about, but as significant as it is, it is hardly primary one (at least in terms of military, which is where my interest primarily lies; general culture and architecture could well have been inspired by Egypt, but somehow I always imagined Minas Tirith and Osgilliath both as being closer to Constantinople aesthetically. And "obsession with death", while it clearly has Egyptian elements - such as mumification, though mausoleums are a clearly Roman thing - was also present in Byzantine Empire).


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## Elthir

Aldarion said:


> ( . . . ) After all, whole work on Middle Earth was, for him, a private project made out of passion - he never actually intended to publish it (had to be convinced to).




Byzantine empire aside, can I ask what this part is based on?

🐾


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## Aldarion

Elthir said:


> Byzantine empire aside, can I ask what this part is based on?
> 
> 🐾



As with so many other things, it is a tidbit of information I got in my brain that I am not sure how, when or where from it got there. It is just floating there. I did manage to find this:








How C.S. Lewis Helped Encourage Tolkien's Novels


Friendly rivals and close confidants, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis had a lasting impact on each other's work and lives.




www.newsweek.com






> "The unpayable debt that I owe to [Lewis] was not 'influence' as it is ordinarily understood but sheer encouragement," Tolkien wrote in a letter to Dick Plotz, "Thain" of the Tolkien Society of America, in 1965. "He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion."



So it might be that it is merely me misremembering the above. But either way, it is clear that whole Middle Earth work started out as a personal hobby, which was - in the beginning at least - not intended for publication.


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## Olorgando

Aldarion said:


> After all, whole work on Middle Earth was, for him, a private project made out of passion - he never actually intended to publish it (had to be convinced to). So searching for his inspiration and influences solely in his professional activities as a professor of linguistics is rather illogical.





Aldarion said:


> But either way, it is clear that whole Middle Earth work started out as a personal hobby, which was - *in the beginning at least* - not intended for publication.


_(The mule trots back into the room 😁 )_
Good thing about your second post. Though I have thought of one nag to it by now.

But as to inspiration by his professional activities: for JRRT, and I believe he stated this more than once, there was no real separation between "professional occupation" and "hobby", or, as you call it more precisely, "passion".
His passion was for languages. He was very fortunate (there may be relatively few similarly fortunate) to translate his passion for languages into his profession. The Classics turned out to be a detour, which he then mostly abandoned for the English School. *The passion came first*. After he had then managed to translate his passion into his profession, he than used his acquired professional skill in constructing his Elven languages. John Garth's "Tolkien and the Great War" is quite instructive about this, as it notes what work JRRT had completed either for what was to later become "The Book of Lost Tales" volumes 1 and 2, and extensive work, highly professional, on Quenya and Sindarin (as they were later called), at certain points. JRRT pursued his passion both professionally and privately, so separating them seems to me artificial.

JRRT's quote about Lewis's encouragement points to one of the former's flaws. Due to being a self-confessed niggler, he was also a notorious non-finisher, in his professional publishing life, too. He had to be pushed to bring The Hobbit into a polished publishable from (*not* complete it; this had been achieved *in manuscript* by very early1933 at the latest as per John D. Rateliff's "The History of The Hobbit". Carpenter's error was thinking that the early tpescript - which had not reached the end of the story yet - was the incomplete state of the whole story at that later time). Yes, he had to be pushed to complete LoTR. Nobody pushed him (at least not enough) to complete The Sil, until it was basically too late.

But there is the matter of what JRRT wrote to Milton Waldman in that famous huge letter from late 1951.
"Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country.
_[Note: here follows the part about what was not inspiration that I had failed to locate for an earlier post!]
It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' ( the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: *not Italy or the Aegean*, still less the East) ..._
I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama *{drama?!?}*. Absurd."

I'm the first to concede that this statement has several weaknesses:
1. it is contained in a letter
2. the letter is written with a certain "slant" with view to publication
3. it is retrospective; if we include JRRT's version of "Kullervo", the writings are at least 37 years old, and all of them over 30, if the "Book of Lost Tales" material.

Could JRRT himself at this time have pinpointed, or at least given the *year*, when he became "of mind" to create this legend? Or when his crest began to fall? As he states "Once upon a time" it seems unlikely.

But if he had actually entertained any such notion as he described it to Waldman, especially that other minds and hands should fill in what he had only sketched - then this is impossible without publication. That he never got even remotely into hailing distance of a publication during during his lifetime ... is no surprise. But that he kept it so private (I exaggerate for the cause of _reductio ad absurdum_) as many people keep their diary (I'm thinking especially of teenagers keeping theirs away from their own parents; nowadays, in one of the most massive pandemics of discontinuous thinking, they nevertheless post at least some of this stuff on Facebook ... _*massive headbanging noises*_) can with high probability be negated - and no, I'm not suggesting that you think he kept it _nearly_ that private.

_(The mule brays and leaves the room again  )_


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## Elthir

Aldarion said:


> ( . . . ) But either way, it is clear that whole Middle Earth work started out as a personal hobby, which was - in the beginning at least - not intended for publication.




We know that Tolkien sent parts of his "Silmarillion" to Allen and Unwin after _The Hobbit _had been published, and that _The Lord of the Rings_ was written with publication in mind, and that again, Tolkien wanted his Silmarillion published, this time along with _The Lord of the Rings_ -- and he was even willing to leave A&U to do it.

With respect to the pre-Hobbit, or early "Silmarillions" days, I think JRRT's desire to create a mythology that he could dedicate to England (stated at one point anyway, see *Gando's *post above) included being published.

And without digging into the arguable/possible aims of certain TCBS members . . .

. . . JRRT had been published quite early, if not on a large "stage" at first (and despite his wishing _Goblin Feet_ had not been published, for example), and from Hammond and Scull's Reader's Guide:

*" . . . following the original "Council of London" Tolkien began to write poetry more prolifically and to circulate it to the others for comment and criticism ( . . . ) the other members gave Tolkien their honest opinions on his poems, and advice on trying to get 
them published."* 

In my opinion, even early on, hopes of publication hovered in the back of Tolkien's mind, including with respect to _The Book of Lost Tales._


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## Aldarion

Elthir said:


> We know that Tolkien sent parts of his "Silmarillion" to Allen and Unwin after _The Hobbit _had been published, and that _The Lord of the Rings_ was written with publication in mind, and that again, Tolkien wanted his Silmarillion published, this time along with _The Lord of the Rings_ -- and he was even willing to leave A&U to do it.
> 
> With respect to the pre-Hobbit, or early "Silmarillions" days, I think JRRT's desire to create a mythology that he could dedicate to England (stated at one point anyway, see *Gando's *post above) included being published.
> 
> And without digging into the arguable/possible aims of certain TCBS members . . .
> 
> . . . JRRT had been published quite early, if not on a large "stage" at first (and despite his wishing _Goblin Feet_ had not been published, for example), and from Hammond and Scull's Reader's Guide:
> 
> *" . . . following the original "Council of London" Tolkien began to write poetry more prolifically and to circulate it to the others for comment and criticism ( . . . ) the other members gave Tolkien their honest opinions on his poems, and advice on trying to get
> them published."*
> 
> In my opinion, even early on, hopes of publication hovered in the back of Tolkien's mind, including with respect to _The Book of Lost Tales._



Problem is that we have a direct statement to the contrary:


> "The unpayable debt that I owe to [Lewis] was not 'influence' as it is ordinarily understood but sheer encouragement," Tolkien wrote in a letter to Dick Plotz, "Thain" of the Tolkien Society of America, in 1965. "He was for long my only audience. *Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby.* But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion."
Click to expand...


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## Elthir

Aldarion said:


> Problem is that we have a direct statement to the contrary:




As I interpret this, Tolkien is talking about encouragement, being uplifted in the hope that he *"could"* be published, and if so, thus his "hobby" would no longer be private -- which to me, does not necessarily mean that before Lewis, Tolkien never *desired/intended* to publish something he'd written.



> "The unpayable debt that I owe to [Lewis] was not 'influence' as it is ordinarily understood but *sheer encouragement. *He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby."




Encouragement that Tolkien's stuff was good enough to be published -- but I'm not sure this is 
the same as Tolkien saying he never intended to publish before Lewis came along, for example. In other words, one could say: I always wanted to publish X, always intended to, but only when I met Mr. Y was I encouraged enough to think it could come true.

As I say, we know JRRT desired to be a poet and sent out his work in hopes of publication -- a collection of poems *The Trumpets of Faerie* to Sidgwick and Jackson, for example (and according to John Garth's _Tolkien and the Great War_, *Tolkien's three schoolfriends had urged him to publish before he was sent to battle*), and JRRT was in fact published -- all before meeting Lewis.

Granted _The Book of Lost Tales_ is a different animal compared to a collection of poems, but that said, when you write: "But either way, it is *clear* that whole Middle Earth work started out as a personal hobby, which was - in the beginning at least - not *intended* for publication." 

I can't agree that Tolkien's early *intent* here is *clear *(at least so far), and I don't see the statement you're raising as (necessarily interpreted as) a direct contradiction to my opinion (an opinion that to my mind, falls in step with Tolkien's young hope of creating a *Mytholgy for England*).


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## Aldarion

Elthir said:


> I'm not sure this constitutes a direct statement to the contrary of my opinion. As I interpret this, Tolkien is talking about encouragement, being uplifted in the hope that he *"could"* be published, and if so, thus his "hobby" would no longer be private -- which to me, does not necessarily mean that before Lewis, Tolkien never *desired/intended* to publish something he'd written.



I say it is "clear" because "private hobby" to me is something you have no intent of publishing:


> *Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby.*"


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## Alcuin

I don’t believe Tolkien initially intended ever to publish anything about Quenya or Sindarin. It seems to me these began as his private musings: how _would_ languages evolve, and in what historical settings might they evolve? It is often said that his mythos was created to provide a home for his languages, and his mythos arose from his languages that were so heavily influenced by those languages and histories and mythologies he most loved: Finnish, Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Old Norse, Latin, and (perhaps) Greek. When he found an audience for one of his tales, _The Hobbit_, and public demand for more, he initially strove to publish the tales of _Silmarillion_; but finding no appetite for such stories at the time, he focused on a new tale, one that concluded all the old ones, weaving together a great crescendo and finale, the end of a magnificent composition. But when he later returned to prepare the earlier themes and movements for publication, he found the task overwhelming, and left this work to his son and literary heir and executor, Christopher, who labored for forty-five years to bring to fuller light his father’s opus.


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## Olorgando

Aldarion said:


> I say it is "clear" because "private hobby" to me is something you have no intent of publishing:
> *Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby.*


Here I must object.
To deduce "no *intent* of publishing" from JRRT's statement is taking that statement more than just a bit too far.
I read it rather as JRRT (at whatever time he is talking about when Lewis's encouragement may have been decisive) had reluctantly come to the conclusion that "his stuff" (whatever he meant by this) was doomed to *remain* a private hobby with hardly any or no hope of publication, and was only encouraged to continue by Lewis. This "no hope" period may have been before the publication of "The Hobbit". JRRT might also have become doubtful of the "New Hobbit" while he was writing it, as it grown so large and changed so much in tone (and was taking so long) that it hardly fit the bill of a successor to TH, and certainly none as a children's book. But I cannot read "no intent" out of this statement in the least.

In this letter to Dick Plotz, he is also at pains to correct at least one misconception that had arisen by this time, at least in some minds. One was that "The Inklings", as far as being published these basically were JRRT, Lewis and Charles Williams, had "influenced" each other. At least for himself and Williams, he firmly denied this. Lewis was quite a different matter, and just before the line you quote is another frequent quote: "But Lewis was a very impressionable man."

The other misconception, as I just noticed, is only implicit if at all in the letter to Plotz. Here it is in a letter to his son Michael (no. 252, a draft, just after Lewis's death on 22 November 1963, overshadowed by the assassination of US President John F. "Jack" Kennedy on the same date):

"I am sorry that I have not answered your letters sooner; but Jack Lewis's death on the 22nd has preoccupied me. It is also involving me in some correspondence, as many people still regard me as one of his intimates. Alas! that ceased to be some ten years ago. We were separated first by the sudden apparition of Charles Williams, and then by his marriage (in 1956; Lewis had also been elected to, and accepted, a chair - professorship - at Cambridge in 1954). Of which he never even told me; I learned of it long after the event. But we owed each a great debt to the other, and that tie with the deep affection that it begot, remains."


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## Elthir

Aldarion said:


> I say it is "clear" because "private hobby" to me is something you have no intent of publishing:




If that's your interpretation of the line in question, no problem. I have another, and it appears I'm not alone in thinking that more than one interpretation is possible here, considering intent.


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## Alcuin

I think Lewis had a profound impact upon Tolkien’s composition of _Lord of the Rings_. For one thing, he and Christopher seem to have been, from time to time, Tolkien’s only audience, and for most of World War II, Christopher was in South Africa. Hugo Dyson, another of the Inklings, was certainly no fan! The chapter “Voice of Saruman” was considerably revised at Lewis’ urging, and the whole story exists at least in part because Lewis bolstered Tolkien’s often flagging zeal to write it. Lewis published a glowing review of the books, and as himself an established popular writer and speaker (he spoke regularly over the BBC during the worst of the Nazi air raids; those notes were gathered together as the excellent little book _Mere Christianity_), he offset some of the more caustic critics that despised Tolkien and his work. Tolkien and Lewis collaborated on writing novels together, and though Tolkien’s three novels on time travel never materialized, Lewis’ three novels on space travel did; and the work Tolkien did fed his vision of Númenor and its fate. 

Last but not least, I strongly suspect Lewis’ objection to the “Epilogue” of _Lord of the Rings_ caused Tolkien to abandon it, so that the story ends abruptly: 
[Sam] drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said. ​


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## Olorgando

Alcuin said:


> ​[Sam] drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said.​​


Three words that rate as one of the greatest endings to any book of any time.

And the best part of PJ's fanfic.


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## Elthir

I've no doubt of Lewis' influence on Tolkien . . . once they'd met 

I like the Epilogue: Sam with Elanor, the "book", the King's impending visit . . . I can see why it would be hard to give up, in any case.


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## Alcuin

Humphrey Carter says they met at an English faculty meeting at Merton College at Oxford on Tuesday 11 May 1926. At the time, a heated general strike had been underway in Britain for eight days in an effort to force the Government to back miners whose jobs and pay were cut. The strike ended the next day. Lewis and Tolkien did not immediately become friends, but that soon changed: in _Letter_ 257, Tolkien describes him as “my closest friend from about 1927 to 1940.”

I love the Epilogue. I think it explains how Sam was able to remain in Middle-earth as long as Rose lived, and why he left after she died.


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## Elthir

I looked into the dating here too, to check that Tolkien had tried to publish his poetry before he met Lewis, that BOLT was already in the making, and that the seeming, arguably lofty aspirations of the TCBS preceded Lewis. Again,* not* that any of that provides "proof" of my opinion about BOLT, but yeah, I came up with the same general time from H&S.

Also, I think I'll change my "like" to "love" of the Epilogue -- on second thought and following your lead *Alcuin* -- the question of whether or not Tolkien should have included it, aside.


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## Akhôrahil

I signed up to this forum after reading the posts in this thread, because I found the tone of the post of the forum member Merroe from September 1, 2020 in the thread with the title "Elfhelm & Dernhelm" that was quoted in this thread to be inappropriate and because I agree with the theory of Aldarion that the Byzantine Empire was probably the primary inspiration for Tolkien for Gondor. I strongly disapprove of a tone that accuses another forum member of writing "fanfic", "nonsense", of having an "idée fixe", of "confusing prospective readers" and of "undermining the credibility of this site". I also strongly disapprove of a tone that uses sentences in the form of a command in bold letters ("Give use your exact references ...") instead of in the form of a polite request or question. I was shocked that the Forum member Halasían used the like button to like this post from Merroe.

These forums are not a scientific journal dedicated to Tolkien research where posts need to contain references to sources. Just because the forum member Merroe does not seem to know based on which sources the forum member Aldarion based his theory, is no justification for calling his views "nonsense" or "fanfic". In contrast to the demand in the post of the forum member Merroe, the forum member Aldarion does not need to provide a reference where JRRT confirmed that "Gondor=Byzantine" (sic!), because the forum member did not claim that Gondor is the same as the Byzantine Empire. In his post from August 31, 2020 in the thread with the title "Elfhelm & Dernhelm" the forum member Aldarion only wrote that "Gondor is obviously based on Byzantine military organization" and provided a link to an article about the military organization of Gondor. The forum member Merroe does not present an alternative theory of a possible primary source of inspiration for Gondor. It is not the forum member Aldarion's problem that it appears that the forum member Merroe does not seem to know Myriam Librán-Moreno's article "'Byzantium, New Rome!': Goths, Langobards and Byzantium in _The Lord of the Rings_" in the book "Tolkien and the study of his sources" edited by Jason Fisher. The book was awarded the Mythopoeic Society's 2014 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies. Most of this article can be read with a search for the keywords Tolkien Crete Umbar with Google and by selecting the books category in google (this displays the pages 84 to 90 and 104 to 108). I also managed to obtain a display of at least pages 95 to 103, probably by searching for the keywords Tolkien Trebizond and by using another computer in order the circumvent the limitation of the maximum number of pages of a books that can be displayed.

In my opinion Myriam Librán-Moreno's article "J.R.R. Tolkien and Jordanes. Some resemblances in spiritual outlook" is also interesting to read.


View of J.R.R. Tolkien and Jordanes. Some resemblances in spiritual outlook


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## Olorgando

Akhôrahil said:


> ... and because I agree with the theory of Aldarion that the Byzantine Empire was probably the primary inspiration for Tolkien for Gondor. ...


And I will continue to *firmly* reject the use of the term "primary", for reasons that I extensively posted.


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## Akhôrahil

Olorgando said:


> And I will continue to *firmly* reject the use of the term "primary", for reasons that I extensively posted.


Have you ever read Myriam Librán-Moreno's article "'Byzantium, New Rome!': Goths, Langobards and Byzantium in _The Lord of the Rings_" in the book "Tolkien and the study of his sources" edited by Jason Fisher?

It seems that somebody merged the two posts that I wrote on september 10, 2020 in this thread. I have no problem with those two posts having been merged, but it seems strange that forum members do not even receive a notification when another forum member (probably a forum administrator) changes their posts.

It is also strange that I received two e-mails on september 10, 2020 from 14:05 and 20:21 with the text of a post from the forum member Aldarion and with a post from the forum member Merroe, but those two posts do not show up in my browser when I look at the thread (not even on the last page of the thread). What is wrong with the forum software?


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## Aldarion

Akhôrahil said:


> It seems that somebody merged the two posts that I wrote on september 10, 2020 in this thread. I have no problem with those two posts having been merged, but it seems strange that forum members do not even receive a notification when another forum member (probably a forum administrator) changes their posts.
> 
> It is also strange that I received two e-mails on september 10, 2020 from 14:05 and 20:21 with the text of a post from the forum member Aldarion and with a post from the forum member Merroe, but those two posts do not show up in my browser when I look at the thread (not even on the last page of the thread). What is wrong with the forum software?



I think I _might_ have written a reply to this thread and then deleted it as unnecessary. Not sure.

BTW, have you read through other threads on forum? There is interesting stuff.


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## Olorgando

Akhôrahil said:


> Have you ever read Myriam Librán-Moreno's article "'Byzantium, New Rome!': Goths, Langobards and Byzantium in _The Lord of the Rings_" in the book "Tolkien and the study of his sources" edited by Jason Fisher?


I have, at least pages 91 to 102 of Fisher's book, which was about one third of Librán-Moreno's article (pages 84-115). What I have also done is just now order the book via telephone (cordless, but landline or fixed-line!) with my favorite bookstore, it should arrive early next week. So thank you for the suggestion of the book  (my wife is rolling her eyes at "*another *Tolkien book?!?" 😁 ).

So I'll reserve more detailed comment until after I have read the entire article. The impression I got from that excerpt is that there are many incidents, involving not just Goths and Langobards, but Huns, Franks, Vandals, Bulgars, Persians and more, and spanning several centuries (from the 4th to the 9th at least). But the situations, intrigues, coups, battles and whatnot are far more confused than that at the Pelennor Fields (for which there seems to more than just one parallel, as for several scenes. or at least entries in Appendix B to LoTR). I still find it difficult to distill Byzantium as a *primary* source for Gondor from this. But this part that I was able to read could well b a listing of parallels that are to be found, while I'm assuming Librán-Moreno will also be drawing some conclusions at the end of the article (and perhaps stating some assumptions at the beginning).

What I am currently re-reading is Verlyn Flieger's 2001 "A Question of Time". One thing it does is firmly establish JRRT as an author of his time (or Century as per Tom Shippey), citing some authors from the late 19th and early, or perhaps first third of the 20th century none of whom I'd heard of before, except for HG Wells and his "Time Machine", as having influenced JRRT as per his own admission of having read them. It led him to abortively write "The Lost Road" (his part of the "wager" with CS Lewis that led Lewis to write "The Cosmic Trilogy") discussed by Christopher Tolkien in the HoMe volume 5 of the same title. Flieger then shows how this line of JRRT's thinking influenced his writing in LoTR over the next 7 years, very much so about Lothlórien. Then, during a hiatus in writing LoTR from late 1944 to mid-1946, JRRT took another shot at writing a time-travel story, "The Notion Club Papers", discussed by Christopher in HoMe volume 9 "Sauron Defeated".

Point is, JRRT seems to have been thinking quite deeply of concepts of time (especially in connection with dreams) at the time, was writing LoTR, had greatly increased duties at Oxford due to WW II, changed his chair in 1945, moved house in 1947 and again 1953, fell out with Allen & Unwin about publishing LoTR (and The Sil, the sticking point), did not get LoTR published by Collins, either (again that Sil), finally got LoTR published, but with RoTK delayed due to his struggle with appendices ...

When was he supposed (at this time, anyway) to have time to research Byzantium, let alone what Librán-Moreno researched, as she quotes sources without end? Some things may fit. From my first reading of the article some things also do not fit, certainly not neatly. I'm looking for ward to reading the whole article.



Aldarion said:


> I think I _might_ have written a reply to this thread and then deleted it as unnecessary. Not sure.


That would be the one about the duck that I got an e-mail notification about? 😁
I'm still not convinced that it's a Byzantine duck ...


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## Aldarion

Olorgando said:


> That would be the one about the duck that I got an e-mail notification about? 😁
> I'm still not convinced that it's a Byzantine duck ...



If it acts like a duck and shows up as a duck on biopsy then it probably is a duck, even if feathers are different...


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## Hisoka Morrow

Aldarion said:


> I think I _might_ have written a reply to this thread and then deleted it as unnecessary. Not sure.
> 
> BTW, have you read through other threads on forum? There is interesting stuff.


You can use the function of signature^^Then much more will see your masterpiece^^Just type your connections into the "signature" part. Hope it helps^^Just keep an eye on some "Left Wing Crusader" XDDD


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## Akhôrahil

Aldarion said:


> I think I _might_ have written a reply to this thread and then deleted it as unnecessary. Not sure.
> 
> BTW, have you read through other threads on forum? There is interesting stuff.


I have read the other threads in which you made posts and a few others, but not all threads in these forums.



Olorgando said:


> I have, at least pages 91 to 102 of Fisher's book, which was about one third of Librán-Moreno's article (pages 84-115). What I have also done is just now order the book via telephone (cordless, but landline or fixed-line!) with my favorite bookstore, it should arrive early next week. So thank you for the suggestion of the book  (my wife is rolling her eyes at "*another *Tolkien book?!?" 😁 ).


You are welcome. I am happy for you that you liked the preview pages of Myriam Librán-Moreno's article so much that you bought the book. At the beginning of the article she discloses which names from which ethnic or cultural groups from late antiquity Tolkien used in The Lord of the Rings, during its development or in Unfinished Tales, which indicates that he had some knowledge about those groups. It is well established that he had an interest in the gothic language. It is likely that he was also interested in the history of the goths and the only work from late antiquity about the history of the goths that was not lost seems to be from Jordanes. Did you also read her other article about Tolkien and Jordanes to which I provided the link? It is possible to download it for free as a PDF-File, if you prefer to read it offline. Myriam Librán-Moreno is a Professor for Greek Philology in the Department of Antiquity Sciences at the University of Extremadura. I hope your wife can enjoy some quiet time while you are reading your new book


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## Olorgando

Akhôrahil said:


> You are welcome. I am happy for you that you liked the preview pages of Myriam Librán-Moreno's article so much that you bought the book.


Well, the link I found on a Wikipedia (English) page - which was specifically about Librán-Moreno's article in the book, not the entire book edited by Jason Fisher (and about which I received a for me confusing notification from my favorite bookstore that delivery will be delayed for perhaps a week because the publisher stated it still has to be printed???) - sent me into part of the world of Google that I normally avoid (I don't Google ...). Besides that selection I mentioned above, however, it also contained the entire table of contents, which promises a lot of other interesting reading - the Rohirrim as Anglo-Saxons is another article that I remember off-bat.


Akhôrahil said:


> I hope your wife can enjoy some quiet time while you are reading your new book


My wife enjoys nearly total control over our TV set and (more importantly) its remote control - though I don't know if that qualifies as *quiet* time (she has liking for crime series and one telenovela). Besides the TV programming in Germany that all too often makes me want to react with 🤮, I am a serious bookworm, and my collection of JRRT books (counting four Hobbits, three LoTRs, several duplicates etc.) is at 83 books. Librán-Moreno's would be no. 84, and in the background lurks the 40th anniversary edition of "Unfinished Tales", illustrated by Alan Lee.


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## Olorgando

Olorgando said:


> Besides that selection I mentioned above, however, it also contained the entire table of contents, which promises a lot of other interesting reading - the Rohirrim as Anglo-Saxons is another article that I remember off-bat.


Picked up the book on Friday, read it Saturday, reserving Librán-Moreno's article for last - it is the longest one in the book, ahead of an article on the influence John Buchan may have had, and an article on possible Mesopotamian (!) influences.

To do her justice, I'll re-read Librán-Moreno's article at least once. One point that she mentions (and that had been nagging at the back of my mind) is that in the "Latin" west, "byzantine" (representing the Hellenistic East) as an adjective is *not* a compliment. And Librán-Moreno's does seem to see JRRT's application of "byzantine" in the time of Denethor, at least, in the same negative light. So when JRRT wrote in that famous letter to Milton Waldman of Collins (this part not to be found in Carpenter's "Letters", but in Hammond & Scull's 2005 "The Lord of The Rings - a reader's companion" on page 746), "Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith" is *not* a compliment!. Denethor having what "western" (Roman Catholic, Latin-speakers that Librán-Moreno's article mentions) see as aspects of the degenerate side of Byzantium.

I'll comment more when I have waded through the parallels she piles up (something like four battles being useful as templates of sort for the Pelennor Fields), jumping centuries at a time. 🥴


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## Aldarion

Connected to this:








Tax Policy of Gondor


As can be seen from military organization, Gondor is in fact a centralized monarchy in the vein of Byzantine Empire. It remained a fairly centralized monarchy, with not a trace of feudalism to be s…




militaryfantasy.home.blog


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## Halasían

This thread and discussion would be a perfect candidate for the *Annals of the Eldanyárë* forum

_"Discussions and activities aimed at understanding the depth of Tolkien's works, and their relationship to other mythologies, theologies, history, and other literary works."_


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## Aldarion

Halasían said:


> This thread and discussion would be a perfect candidate for the *Annals of the Eldanyárë* forum
> 
> _"Discussions and activities aimed at understanding the depth of Tolkien's works, and their relationship to other mythologies, theologies, history, and other literary works."_



Yeah, I posted it here on reflex, but it would have fit there better.


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## Akhôrahil

Olorgando said:


> Picked up the book on Friday, read it Saturday, reserving Librán-Moreno's article for last - it is the longest one in the book, ahead of an article on the influence John Buchan may have had, and an article on possible Mesopotamian (!) influences.


Have you already read Librán-Moreno's article in that book and the one on Tolkien and Jordanes for which I provided a link in the meantime?


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## Prince Imrahil

Not only is Gondor the Byzantine Empire, but also Rohan is Anglo-Saxon England. ROTK is the story of how Old England saved the West by lifting the siege of Constantinople (a bit far-fetched, but hey, it's fiction). The charge of the Rohirrim is clearly inspired by the charge of the Polish Winged Hussars at the gates of Vienna (a battle also fought against the Ottomans). Tolkien used the central event of European history in the second millenium (the fall of Constantinople) to help him forge a mythology for the English people.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner

A closer parallel is the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in Gaul, 451 as described by Jordanes, in his History of the Goths, which Tolkien certainly read. This was pointed out by T.A.Shippey, among others, such as Elizabeth Solopova. Tolkien's interest in the Goths, and the Gothic language, is well-known. In fact, he gave Gothic names to the northern ancestors of the Rohirrim, and the events that led to the rebellion of Catimir are modelled on the resentment of Romans and Byzantines against the "barbarian" Goths being in positions of power.


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## Olorgando

Prince Imrahil said:


> ... but also Rohan is Anglo-Saxon England.





Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> A closer parallel is the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in Gaul, 451 as described by Jordanes, in his History of the Goths, which Tolkien certainly read. ... Tolkien's interest in the Goths, and the Gothic language, is well-known.


First, I would strongly advise against the use of "X is Y" when discussing JRRT's works, especially allegorically. He did not work this way. He used sources, no question, but practically always transformed them to suit his purposes.

Case in point "Rohan = Anglo-Saxon England". Yes, they have many similarities down to names (*always* an important point to JRRT!), but there is this nagging bit about the Anglo-Saxons viewing cavalry with distaste. Well, I'm re-reading relevant parts of that book mentioned above, "Tolkien and the Study of His Sources" edited by Jason Fisher. One contribution is by noted German Tolkien scholar Thomas Honegger, titled (I compress) "Anglo-Saxons on Horseback?" Here I also compress the answer: "Yes - if you throw in the *Goths*, very much using cavalry in warfare, into the mix."

Now back to reading, specifically Myriam Librán-Moreno's article (not solely about Byzantium), and one contributed by the editor of the book, Jason Fisher, himself. This sounds some warnings about limitations to source studies. I shall return! _(now who once said that and when - at least in 20th century American legend?_  _)_


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## Hisoka Morrow

Prince Imrahil said:


> ...Not only is Gondor the Byzantine Empire, but also Rohan is Anglo-Saxon England. ROTK is the story of how the Old English people saved the West by lifting the siege of Constantinople (a bit far-fetched, but hey, it's fiction)....


Or maybe Rohan could be considered as widely-defined Western Roman Empire vassal, after all, JRRT's work had bunches of ambiguity. Strictly speaking, the western Middle western EU were all widely defined Western Roman Imperial Vassals, if we took a further strictly defined standard of politics, in spite of the other elements, such as difference caused by exclusively contemporary definition, and so forth.


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## Olorgando

First, Jason Fisher's contribution "Tolkien and Source criticism". A central statement, in my eyes, is on page 37:

"One must always keep in mind that source studies require a _causal_ relationship, or at least, the probability of one. The proposed source must have been available to Tolkien, and we would like to be able to demonstrate he actually read it. Without that, we may still observe similarities between two works - Tolkien's and another author's - but the best we can hope for, and all we should aim for in such cases, is a comparative study. Poor source studies are often just comparative studies whose reach has exceeded their grasp; subtract the tenuous claims of deliberate borrowing or influence, and you may have an excellent comparative essay."

Further on page 38:

"In the absence of sufficient evidence, there are too many other explanations for the images, episodes, and motives Tolkien's writings seem to have in common with earlier works. It could be that Tolkien and an author who apparently influenced him both derived their common elements from a third party, some still earlier source. Alternatively, some elements may be common enough to derive, in a sense, from a shared pool of mythopoeic elements, found in too many works for us to ever know from which specific one(s) Tolkien borrowed. *And of course there is always the possibility of mere coincidence: there is absolutely no reason two authors could not independently invent analogous episodes, images, names, or characters, or even use similar language to describe them.* Just because there is a Røros, Vestfold and Østfold in Norway does not mean that Tolkien modeled Rohan on that country."

To be continued ...


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## Prince Imrahil

Sure, Anglo-Saxons with a Gothic taste for cavalry and a Visigoth king just about nails it. In fact I found out I had a false memory about Bernard Hill playing Theodoric I in this TV series, but it turns out that was Liam Cunningam instead.


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## Olorgando

Now to Myriam Librán-Moreno's article:

„Byzantium, New Rome!” Goths, Langobards, and Byzantium in The Lord of the Rings.

Starting with the Introduction, with a statement I feel must not be overlooked:

“… and that Tolkien put the complex history of the dealings of Goths and Langobards with the Byzantine Empire to unique, nuanced, and innovative creative uses. Afterwards, I shall attempt to throw some light on the reasons for Tolkien’s life-long interest in Goths and Langobards, *as well as for his antipathy toward Constantinople*, as revealed by his narrative use of the historical parallels under discussion.”

One thing is certain to me: whatever parallels Librán-Moreno finds, they are so scattered across both Byzantine et al, and Appendix A / B history (including Númenor!) that parallels in sequence simply do not exist. And while Roman / Byzantine grumping about “barbarians” being given high command is mentioned, one historical example is exactly the opposite: the kin-strife happened among the Goths in that case, not among the Byzantines.

Librán-Moreno’s notes, and list of works consulted, dwarf that of any contributor. But her contribution, longest of all in the book, is one thing, and one thing only:

“… the best we can hope for, and all we should aim for in such cases, is a comparative study.”

She utterly fails on the crucial point:

“One must always keep in mind that source studies require a _causal_ relationship, or at least, the probability of one.”


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## Squint-eyed Southerner

I'd have to look up sources, which I'm too lazy to do at the moment, but there was at least one occasion on which Goths in high positions, including that of Magister Militum, were purged, and many in the army were supposedly killed, in an anti-"foreigner" frenzy.


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## Prince Imrahil

Olorgando said:


> in the "Latin" west, "byzantine" (representing the Hellenistic East) as an adjective is *not* a compliment. And Librán-Moreno's does seem to see JRRT's application of "byzantine" in the time of Denethor, at least, in the same negative light


It is not a compliment, but I find it hard to believe that Tolkien meant to use the word in the dictionary sense of "complicated and difficult to understand" (mainly because it doesn't make any sense, given the context). Given all the parallels between Gondor and the Byzantine Empire listed by OP and discussed at length elsewhere, a simple application of Occam's Razor leads us to conclude that Tolkien used the word in the more obvious sense of "of or having to do with the ancient city of Byzantium or the Eastern Roman Empire".


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## Olorgando

I admire Aldarion's efforts to gather so much information about similarities - but he fails on a very crucial point, as does Myriam Librán-Moreno:

“One must always keep in mind that source studies require a _causal_ relationship, or at least, the probability of one.”
I see a weak probability, but no more. Certainly much too weak to bolster the mass of what is circumstantial evidence.
My guess is that it was selected to fit a preconception; not one "grasped out of thin air" certainly, but a preconception can lead to selective perception: seeing only what one wants to see, ignoring contradictory information.

Interestingly, perhaps revealingly, Librán-Moreno's most-used word is "compare".
To quote Jason Fisher from above again:
"... but the best we can hope for, and all we should aim for in such cases, is a comparative study. Poor source studies are often just comparative studies whose reach has exceeded their grasp; subtract the tenuous claims of deliberate borrowing or influence, and you may have an excellent comparative essay."
and again, just before that:
"The proposed source must have been available to Tolkien, and we would like to be able to demonstrate he actually read it."

Neither Aldarion nor Myriam Librán-Moreno have demonstrated this, in my view. It may be impossible do demonstrate for many works of possible sources that JRRT definitively *did* or *did not* read them. But what happens all too often is that one possibility is rejected in knee-jerk reflex:
Jason Fisher again: *And of course there is always the possibility of mere coincidence: there is absolutely no reason two authors could not independently invent analogous episodes, images, names, or characters, or even use similar language to describe them.*
But we on average reject this possibility impulsively, that it cannot be. A *very* serious defect in perception. Causalities are massively less frequent than we wrongly believe to find them. I'm not sure how bad our defect at recognizing correlations is. But study after study has found that we underestimate the frequency of coincidences by orders of magnitude. They don't make "sense" to us, but our wish to find sense in everything is practically infinite.


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## sossruko

Having read pages of arguments under this post, I think Aldarion unconsciously personalizes Tolkien's work by his reality of history, which is understandable. I believe there are certain patterns in history that civilizations face as they come and go but it doesn't necessarily make the Byzantines the inspiration behind Gondor. Though, I would be glad to hear more about it if that is the case. To be honest, speaking of the Eastern Romans (not Byzantines), I was expecting someone to associate the evil powers of Mordor with the nomadic Turks, and, yet again, I am not surprised. I find it completely normal for a human to find a small similarity in a story and make it relatable to his reality.

After all, I believe his work to be a modern myth that entails the same story that has been told over centuries. From what I've seen, you are so concentrated on the Byzantines, and likewise, this theory that I find it to be misleading. Never mind though, I'm not an expert neither on Tolkien's legacy, nor the Eastern Roman history. What I can suggest, on the other hand, is that you should go out from your shell once in a while and see that not everything is about the Byzantines, hence your people's history.


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## Hisoka Morrow

sossruko said:


> ...your shell once in a while and see that not everything is about the Byzantines, hence your people's history....


He's from Croatia, could he still be considered as Byzantines?XD


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## Aukwrist

Aldarion said:


> I have just cited some of them.
> 
> 
> 
> I say that Gondor is "obviously" based on Byzantine Empire because, as far as I can see, _*nothing else fits *_even though it is almost as obvious (to me) that Byzantine Empire is not the sole inspiration for Gondor.
> 
> Gondor is far too centralized for a feudal state, with absolutely no evidence for insubfeudation. But on the other hand, its provincial governors are also military commanders, which is much more decentralized than Roman or early Byzantine provincial system. That is basically what Byzantine thematic system is all about. Look at commanders coming to Minas Tirith - each leads their own force, and none of them are subordinate to one another, as would be the case in feudal system.
> Gondor is also centered on a single extremely-fortified city - while other fortresses do exist, it is clear that everyone believes that fall of Minas Tirith would mean fall of Gondor. This again is the same as Byzantine Empire which was centered on Constantinople.
> And then we have all the other organizational, sociological and historical similarities I have listed in the OP which I will not repeat here.
> Again, *if you can find a single state which "checks all the boxes" I have listed other than Byzantine Empire*, I will concede. I have not found such. No, Gondor is not _allegory_ for Byzantine Empire, but is clearly _inspired by_ it. *Allegory and inspiration are not the same.*
> 
> I have not had to put all that much of effort into searching for similarities I have listed (though I did spend effort double-checking them, especially on a _LotR _side). I have spent a lot of time researching Byzantine Empire for other purposes, and most of these similarities were _glaringly _obvious as soon as I started a reread. Had I put significant effort into making the list, said list would likely be much longer, and each point would be much more extensive.
> 
> 
> 
> It might be problem with terminology I had used - English is not my first language - but as I have pointed out in OP, I do not believe that Byzantine Empire is the *sole* inspiration for Gondor, but I do believe it is the *primary *one. Likewise, I never stated that Tolkien did a one-for-one transplant from history to fantasy, but was rather inspired by certain historical events - but he obviously shifted them around and changed them. Again, it is not a copy-paste job. All the differences you list are basically hairsplitting.
> 
> Arnor and Gondor both show - much like Numenor - inspirations from Egypt as well (and I have pointed that out even in the OP, but you appear to have missed it). "Northern Kingdom" and "Southern Kingdom" thing you mention obviously play into Egyptian inspiration. However, the manner of division (kingdoms were divided by brothers) is likely





Aldarion said:


> Moved reply from this thread to avoid off-topicing much...
> 
> 
> 
> It is not fanfic. I do not explain it in detail before because, frankly, it should be obvious to anyone who has even superficial knowledge of Gondor's and Byzantine history both. If nobody here understands relation and similarities of Byzantium and Gondor, then this site does not have that much credibility to be undermined to begin with. (Sorry if tone of response seems aggressive, but what you wrote is basically combination of personal attack and emotional blackmail). And no, Gondor is not _just_ Byzantine Empire - it also has influences of Holy Roman Empire and ancient Egypt - but parallels with Byzantine Empire are the most obvious - though this might simply be due to me having more knowledge about Byzantine Empire than about ancient Egypt (or HRE, for that matter).
> 
> First, we have Tolkien's own statements that Gondor is analogous to the Byzantine Empire:
> _"In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium."
> "Now we come to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith"_
> 
> Tolkien has also located Minas Tirith at latitude of Florence. This latitude (43,77) is similar though not exactly the same to that of Constantinople (41,01) and Rome (41,9).
> 
> Second, we have history of Arnor and Gondor:
> 1) Arnor and Gondor were formed by survivors of disaster - Elendil, Isildur and Anarion. Rome was likewise founded by survivors of a disaster - Eneas, Romulus and Remus.
> 2) Arnor and Gondor were technically under one crown, with king of Arnor being superior to king of Gondor, but in practice they acted as separate states. This is exact same situation as Roman Empire post-395 (and even earlier), where Emperor of Western Empire was (typically but not always) the senior _Augustus_ and technically ruled both halves of the Empire, but in practice the Eastern Empire - being more powerful - did as it pleased. Similarly, it is clear that Gondor quite quickly outstrips Arnor in terms of political and military power, despite former being technically a "senior" kingdom.
> 3) Arnor was politically "superior" as seat of Elendil, but Gondor was economically, demographically and militarily stronger - much like Western Roman Empire had distinction of containing Rome, but was in all other aspects (demography, economy, military) inferior to Eastern Roman Empire.
> 4) Western Roman Empire was lost to conquest from the North (Germans), and Arnor was lost to conquest from the North (Angmar).
> 5) Arnor splits into three kingdoms, much like Frankish Empire - which claimed descent from Western Roman Empire - did.
> 6) Gondor keeps going on for much longer than Arnor (WRE - ERE).
> 7) Arvediu attempted to gain throne of Gondor, but was rejected by the Dunedian who gave crown to Earnil. Similarly, when Charlemagne offered to marry Empress Irene, thus uniting both empires under the same ruler, Byzantines rejected not just the marriage but Irene as well (she was already deeply unpopular). Later, Otto I. also tried to unite Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire, by offering a marriage of his son Otto II. to Byzantine princess, but this was again rejected.
> 8) In a last-ditch effort to save Arnor, Gondor sends a naval expedition - which fails at fulfilling the goal. This is roughly similar to Byzantine expedition aimed at saving North Africa to Empire (launched under Theodosius III) which was a failure, albeit for different reasons.
> 9) During height of its power, Gondor conquers areas of Rhun and Harad for a short while. Roman Empire had conquered Mesopotamia for a short while under Trajan (even names are similar - Turambar / Trajan, though it could be a coincidence).
> 10) Many of the enemies which threatened Gondor were eastern nomads - Wainriders, Balchoth etc. - which were noted for usage of wagons and chariots. Similarly, Eastern Roman Empire was threatened by numerous nomads, some of which also relied heavily on wagons. Pechenegs used wagons in a laager, and Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD was lost partly because of Gothic use of wagon fort.
> 11) King Eldacar managed to win back the throne with help of Northmen. Similarly, Basil II kept his throne thanks to the alliance with Prince Vladimir of Kiev.
> 12) Gondor declined thanks to Kin-Strife, constant warfare and the plague. Byzantine Empire also declined thanks to these factors - it was Justinian's Plague and recurrent occurences of the disease which first caused the loss of Justinian's reconquest, but also the subsequent inability to defend against Arab expansion. Later 14th century decline from which the Empire never recovered was also caused by plague.
> 13) Gondor lost its largest harbour (Umbar) thanks to Dark Numenoreans, but permanent loss was only due to Men of Harad. Likewise, Byzantium lost its largest harbour (Alexandria) several times thanks to various rebellions (and then Persians), but the final loss was to Arabs.
> 14) Constantine XI remained in foklore as "marble king" whose return would signal resurrection of the Empire. Return of Aragorn signals resurrection of United Kingdom of Arnor and Gondor.
> 
> Third, there is sociopolitical organization:
> 1) We have literally no evidence of subinfeudation. All "fiefs" are of roughly similar size, and all lords only rule these fiefs. No lord is superior to another, but all of them answer to the Steward at Minas Tirith. This organization is essentially identical to Byzantine thematic system with elements of Anglo-Saxon fyrd, rather than anything which could be described as "feudal". See here and here.
> 2) Imrahil is commander of forces of Belfalas, but he himself is Lord of Dol Amroth. There is no direct connection between the two as in feudal system.
> 3) Unlike feudal system, Gondor is highly centralized - to the point that fall of Minas Tirith is generally understood to also mean the fall of Gondor, and City is often equalized with Gondor as such. Byzantine Empire after 7th century was centered on Constantinople, the only major urban centre remaining within the Empire (there were a few other cities, but none anywhere as significant as pre-Conquest Alexandria, Carthage, Antioch). When Constantinople fell in 1203. and again in 1204., the Empire fractured, with occupied Latin Empire as well as Byzantine-controlled Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond. Empire of Nicaea managed to reconquer Constantinople, but Epirus and Trebizond both remained independent.
> 
> Fourth, there is strategic and physical geography:
> 1) Gondor controls pass over Anduin at Osgilliath, and thus is a main target of attack. This is basically the situation of Constantinople during existence of the Empire, and later, Belgrade and Budapest during Hungarian-Ottoman and Habsburg-Ottoman wars. Byzantine Empire essentially controlled land route into southeastern Europe from Near East, which made it a target of conquerors during its entire existence.
> 2) Gondor defends realms of men against threats coming out of the East and South, whereas Arnor defends them against threat from North (Angmar). This is similar to how Byzantine Empire defended Europe against threats from the East (Arabs, Turks) and South (Arabs) while Frankish Empire defended Europe and Mediterranean against threats from the West (technically southwest - Arabs) and North (Vikings, Germans).
> 3) Eastern borders of Gondor are defined by the mountains (Ephel Duath) and then retreat to the river (Anduin). This again is similar to both Byzantine Empire (Taurus-Antitaurus > retreat to Bosphorus and Dardanelles after Manzikert) and Hungary (Carpathian Mountains > retreat to Danube and beyond after Mohacs). Unlike Byzantium, new border is a river, but unlike Hungary, said border is more-or-less permanent (whereas Hungary to west of Danube was quickly conquered after Battle of Mohacs, and new border was defined by hills, marshes and forrests as opposed to a river).
> 4) Strategic importance of Minas Tirith as well as its layered defences are clear parallel to Constantinople. Minas Tirith has seven walls + the Rammas Echor. Rammas Echor is a clear analogue to Constantinople's Anastasian Walls. Also, Constantinople will have had seven layers of defences if all the walls had survived:
> 
> The Long Wall.
> The Theodosian Wall(s).
> The Wall of Constantine.
> The Severan Wall of New Byzantium.
> the Wall of Old Byzantium.
> The outer wall of the Great Palace.
> The wall around the inner part of the Great Palace.
> 5) Rome and Constantinople were both built on seven hills, where Minas Tirith has seven concentric walls on a single hill. Though, its circular shape is likely inspired by Plato's description of Atlantis.
> 6) On the other hand, Constantinople's physical geography and its location on a crucial waterway is paralleled better by Osgilliath. There is also the fact that dome of Osgilliath is given importance (Hagia Sophia?).
> 7) Minas Tirith is falling into disrepar by the time of War of the Ring, with only half the people living in the city as should be physically possible. Constantinople could have had 500 000 residents within its Theodosian Walls, but for most of its history actual number varied from 50 000 to 200 000. Much of the land within the city was abandoned, becoming farmland and even pasture, and at worst points Constantinople was basically a collection of walled villages encompassed by massive Theodosian walls.
> 8) After Arab invasions in 7th century, Byzantine Empire became an essentially garrison state, where learning and philosophy were abandoned in favour of sheer survival. Cities retracted, literacy dropped (albeit not as much as in Western Europe) and masonry from old buildings was used to build city walls for now much smaller settlements. This is precisely what has happened in Gondor: Boromir is favoured over Faramir in part precisely because latter is interested in lore more than in warfare. Faramir's speech to Frodo is also quite clear about this change in attitude which is indicative of militarization of society.
> 9) Byzantine Empire had an extensive beacon system which connected Constantinople to Cilicia. Gondor had two systems of beacons, one connecting Minas Tirith to southern fiefs, and another connecting Minas Tirith to border of Rohan.
> 10) Gondor at its height encircled Bay of Belfalas, much like Byzantine Empire encircled much of Mediterranean Sea.
> 11) Outermost wall of Minas Tirith was never breached until Witch King used magic to breach the City Gate. Likewise, Theodosian Walls of Constantinople were never breached until invention of gunpowder. There was however one time when Theodosian Walls were nearly defeated after earthquake brought down the walls in 448, but quick reconstruction prevented the catastrophe. This _might _have been alluded to by Tolkien's statement that Wall of Minas Tirith could not be breached except by an earthquake, though it is more likely statement was merely descriptory.
> 12) Osgilliath however is more similar to Constantinople in that it was original capital of the Eastern Empire, and was besieged multiple times.
> 
> Fifth, culture and architecture:
> 1) Gondorian kings are given nicknames based on the peoples they had defeated - Romendacil, Umbardacil. LIkewise, Roman Emperors often took nicknames based on the opponents they had vanquished - Germanicus, Africanus for Ancient Rome, or Bulgarokontos for Byzantine Empire.
> 2) Osgilliath has a great dome which collapses at one point, similar to Hagia Sophia.
> 3) In Gondor, Sindarin was day-to-day language with Quenya being only used by learned men. In Byzantium, Greek was day-to-day language with Latin only used by learned men (and, until Justinian, in administration as well).
> 
> I say that Gondor is "obviously" based on Byzantine Empire *because nothing else fits what can be seen from the books. *If you know a state which just so happens to have the sociopolitical and military organization similar enough to serve as basis of that of Gondor, please, go ahead and explain how it fits the points above. Now, Byzantine Empire is not the _only _basis for Gondor - there are major influences from Holy Roman Empire, Hungary and Egypt - but it is clearly the primary one.



I think Aldarion has made a convincing case. 

There is another similarity, I think.

Compared to what it had been at its greatest extent, between about 1050 and 1150, Gondor was shrunken. It had lost Haradwaith and later Umbar, and a thousand years later it freely alienated Calenardhon, as a gift to the Rohirrim. By the War of the Ring it still has some fiefs, but not much more.

By the time of its fall in 1453, the Byzantine Empire was similarly shrunken, after similar alternations of weakness and strength.

There are similarities, in part because there are similar forces at work.


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## Aldarion

Aukwrist said:


> There are similarities, in part because there are similar forces at work.


Yeah, that is definitely part of it. But I do believe Gondor draws at least some inspiration from the Byzantine Empire (I'd say a lot), much like Arnor does from the Frankish Empire.


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## Olorgando

Olorgando said:


> Jason Fisher's contribution "Tolkien and Source criticism" _[from the book "Tolkien and the Study of His Sources", of which Fisher was editor as well as contributor]_. A central statement, in my eyes, is on page 37:
> 
> "One must always keep in mind that source studies require a _causal_ relationship, or at least, the probability of one. The proposed source must have been available to Tolkien, *and we would like to be able to demonstrate he actually read it*. Without that, we may still observe similarities between two works - Tolkien's and another author's - but the best we can hope for, and all we should aim for in such cases, is a comparative study. Poor source studies are often just comparative studies whose reach has exceeded their grasp; subtract the tenuous claims of deliberate borrowing or influence, and you may have an excellent comparative essay."





Olorgando said:


> I admire Aldarion's efforts to gather so much information about similarities - ... as does Myriam Librán-Moreno.
> 
> ... It may be impossible do demonstrate for many works of possible sources that JRRT definitively *did* or *did not* read them. ...


Barring any new proofs positive one way of the other in "The Nature of Middle-earth" edited by Carl F. Hostetter (which my favorite bookstore has announced for delivery next month), the issue of a causal relationship remains a standoff for me. Saying "This can't be a coincidence!" in my presence is the surest way of eliciting an icy stare and a blunt comment from me, as I've done a lot of reading on the topic of coincidence.
Waiting for Hostetter ...


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## Alcuin

Olorgando said:


> Saying "This can't be a coincidence!" in my presence is the surest way of eliciting an icy stare and a blunt comment from me, as I've done a lot of reading on the topic of coincidence.


“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.” – Auric Goldfinger (_Goldfinger_, Ian Fleming)


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## Olorgando

Alcuin said:


> Olorgando said:
> 
> 
> 
> Saying "This can't be a coincidence!" in my presence is the surest way of eliciting an icy stare and a blunt comment from me, as I've done a lot of reading on the topic of coincidence.
> 
> 
> 
> “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.” – Auric Goldfinger (_Goldfinger_, Ian Fleming)
Click to expand...

Ian Fleming was definitely not among the noted authors on the topic of coincidence. 🤨


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## Olorgando

Alcuin said:


> Olorgando said:
> 
> 
> 
> Saying "This can't be a coincidence!" in my presence is the surest way of eliciting an icy stare and a blunt comment from me, as I've done a lot of reading on the topic of coincidence.
> 
> 
> 
> “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.” – Auric Goldfinger (_Goldfinger_, Ian Fleming)
Click to expand...

I'll counter Ian Fleming with Arthur C. Clarke, from "3001 - The Final Odissey" (1997):

"Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence."


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## Alcuin

Very funny! 😃

Yet that which appears to be “incompetence” may conceal malevolence. Ergo gratis, Adm. Wilhelm Canaris vis-à-vis the 1933-45 German government.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you. 

"There's a plot to make me look paranoid".

Me, 1974.


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## Olorgando

Alcuin said:


> Yet that which appears to be “incompetence” may conceal malevolence. Ergo gratis, Adm. Wilhelm Canaris vis-à-vis the 1933-45 German government.


Hmyes, though I have this odd feeling that it may be difficult to fake incompetence.
I'm *certain* that "natural" incompetence is hugely more wide-spread.
And then, wasn't the "Peter Principle" in a nutshell: "promote beyond competence threshold"?


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## Hisoka Morrow

Olorgando said:


> ...And then, wasn't the "Peter Principle" in a nutshell: "promote beyond competence threshold"?...


Back to one golden rule " statecraft and ruses are art.". Here're some points can be taken into account, newly prommoted post's requirements, such as the case shown in the WWII film Saharah(1995), the competetion for the command between a well-combat-hardened sergeant and the purely logistic Cpt. In general, it's how you assert the competence.


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## Elbereth Vala Varda

This is a very interesting thread. Always intriguing to see parallels to Tolkien's works.


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## Berzelmayr

What I find interesting is that Tolkien mentioned the year _1453_ in one of his christmas letters:


> One night, just about Christopher's birthday,** I woke up suddenly. There was squeaking and spluttering in the room and a nasty smell - in my own best green and purple room that I had just had done up most beautifully. I caught sight of a wicked little face at the window. Then I really was upset, for my window is high up above the cliff, and that meant there were bat-riding Goblins about - which we haven't seen since the goblin-war in 1453 that I told you about.





Christmas' letters.



It was actually also the year, when the _Hundred Years' War _between France and England finally ended, but it's mostly known for the point, when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans.


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## Elbereth Vala Varda

Berzelmayr said:


> What I find interesting is that Tolkien mentioned the year _1453_ in one of his christmas letters:
> 
> 
> 
> Christmas' letters.
> 
> 
> 
> It was actually also the year, when the _Hundred Years' War _between France and England finally ended, but it's mostly known for the point, when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans.


Intriguing.


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