Are Elves vegatarian?

[mhagain]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

It does indeed seem to fit the mold of Elves, or other beings associated with "nature" as being incapable of using fellow creatures for anything.

Trouble is that Elves being particularly close to nature is another of those later tropes that gets retroactively applied to Tolkien.

Tolkien's own Elves had no problems with living in cities, working in mines and quarries, building great roads, etc. Turgon's people were almost exclusively urbanized, and Tumladen must have been very heavily farmed. Círdan's people lived in walled cities.

Sure, there wouldn't be a haze of industrial pollution over Gondolin, but you could pitch it at a similar technology level as the Roman Empire, say. Maybe Elvish aesthetics would balk at raw sewage flowing in the streets, but otherwise it seems to fit.