Servant or Master?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lord Halsar

We must remember one thing when it comes to actual strength. Melkor was diminished in power by spreading his own strength through his servants (and the world), and I would guess that he did not regain this power once they died. And to this I also say, Sauron was no fool. He would not make the same mistake Melkor did in powering his troops with his own being. So, while Sauron churned out hundreds of thousands of soldiers for his own uses, Melkor, even with his imprisonment, would still have all of those bits of strength continue to draw away from him. If indeed he was not getting this power back, he would have two Ages worth of lost power on (or perhaps off) his hands.

The one thing you fail to understand is Morgoth was victorious in Middle-earth. I'll say it again, he was utterly and overwhelmingly victorious. Morgoth crushed the greatest warriors of the Eldar and Edain (Feanor, Fingolfin, Fingon, Hurin, Turgon etc.), and all the fabled Elvish strongholds eventually fell to his armies (including the majestic hidden kingdoms of Nargothrond and Gondolin). It required Eärendil to take the case of Elves and Men to the Valar, and only the angelic armies of Aman managed to defeat Morgoth and reclaim Middle-earth, but in the process Beleriand was completely destroyed and submerged in the raging tumult. I want you to consider armies of that proportion and battle of that magnitude when comparing Morgoth and his lieutenant Sauron (and he was certainly Morgoth's subaltern, dutifully awaiting his master's return when he was first imprisoned by the Valar).

Sauron? He was not so successful; in fact, he lost almost every significant war (save perhaps the destruction of the Dunedain kingdoms in Eriador) while winning many of the battles: the might of the Numenoreans caused his armies to flee in panic, the Last Alliance of Elves and Men defeated him at the foot of Mount Doom, and we all know what happened during the War of the Ring. When comparing the armies that faced Morgoth to those Sauron faced, one could say quite rightly that only the Numenoreans under Ar-Pharazon were a truly formidable force along the lines of Fingolfin's Noldor at Dagor Aglareb or the armies of Eldar, Edain and Dwarves in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Certainly the later armies Sauron faced in the 3rd Age were in no way comparable to the fierce Noldor of Valinor returning in their bright youth to the shores of Middle-earth.

Sauron was often defeated by his own arrogance and shortsightedness. When one considers the gamble, creating the Rings of Power were actually a deterrent to Sauron's plan for dominion rather than an aid. He was clever enough without it to defeat the Numenoreans with guile and without an army; however, losing the One Ring to Isildur caused a shift in his focus away from domination to a fevered race to find it. The waning of his incarnate manifestation cost him centuries of rebuilding and gave the Peoples of the West a respite, and time for the Valar to send the Istari to do their missionary work. The armies of Gondor and Rohan could not have held Sauron back if the Ring were not a unifier of his foes. The Ring in essence defeated him when his enemies' armies could not.

P.S. It is evident that Melkor Morgoth was the main antagonist in Tolkien's creation mythos, much like Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost. Morgoth was the great evil, and a primal force of nature in both a physical and spiritual sense. A fomenter of rebellion against the supreme being (in this case Eru Ilúvatar), he was the greatest of the Valar (coeval of Manwe), creator (in at least a genetic manipulation sense) of the great dragons and the Orc; and it shall be Morgoth's return from behind the Door of Night that will be the catalyst for the final battle at the end of days. Sauron in no way has the same stature in Tolkien's cosmology.