I was interested to read what you had to say here,
Inziladun, then
Belegorn:
On a tangential note, it's really amazing that Gollum the Stoor was able to live to such an advanced age with the help of the Ring. Was that too a product of his innate longevity?
That was the Ring itself. Otherwise he was still some remnant of himself after possessing it for so long. He did not always wear it when under the mountain so that may have helped in his not being totally bound to the Ring.
I agree that Gollum's longevity was due to his hobbit nature plus the Ring. While I don't have
LotR to hand, I recall Gandalf telling Frodo, after recounting the story of Gollum, how he got the Ring, and how he had it for so long, that hobbits seemed as soft as butter, but as tough as old tree roots. He was honestly admitting that while he was interested in hobbits, and had known them for a long time, there was a lot about them he did not know.
Gandalf said that while he was always suspicious about the Ring, because of Bilbo lying about how he got it, he let things pass, even though that hobbit continued to look youthful for his age, by saying to himself that he was from a long-lived (for hobbits) family on his mother's side. This was a reference to the Old Took, his maternal grandfather, who lived to 130.
What I've always liked about Tolkien is that he never explicitly called Gollum a hobbit. All he was prepared to say was once that Gollum
looked like a very ancient hobbit. This was to ask the question that if something like the Ring makes a mortal being from a particular race live far longer than his or her normal time span, is that person still a member of that race?
