Do Balrogs Have Wings?

[obloquy]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

There are so many unfounded assumptions in that article that it would take a post of a similar length to rebut them all -- "narrow" as an essential part of the definition of chasm? And even so, who says the bridge spans the chasm's width, and not its length? "Minimally, for something to be called narrow its length must be at least twice its width." Huh? According to who? His deductions about the door of the Chamber of Mazarbul are pure invention. One can wedge a door that's thirty feet wide and thirty feet tall as easily as one that's five by five. Tolkien's talking about wedging, not barring, as occurs in the movie.

Fortunately, SPM has already rebutted the only faulty assumptions that really need to be addressed.

Dear Mister Underhill, I think you're missing the most important and convincing point in the article: he quoted Marcus Aurelius.

I do think he envisions a much larger room than I ever did. Still, we can make reasonable assumptions about how wide the room is based on the fact that there were two rows of mighty columns upholding the roof. It seems very unlikely that the room was a mere 30 feet wide, and that these columns were only a couple feet in diameter and stood only 5 feet or so from each wall and each other.