Posted: March 07, 1999 at 01:52:32: by Stephen Geard
: I don't believe he enslaved Saruman at all. Saruman got corrupted and gave up the original mission for sure, but certainly was not enslaved.Tolkien uses the word "ensnared" in the LOTR, maybe "ensalved" is a bit strong. But I don't really think Saruman had much free-choice left - he may have thought he did, but he was really only serving Sauron. : Why not? That's exactly what Gil-galad and Elendil and co. did a few years later! Not really. Gil-galad and Elendil's seige of the Barad-dur was a stalemate, and only ended when Sauron came out and challenged them to single combat. Gil-galad alone certainly could not have captured the Barad-dûr. More importantly: My theory that Sauron left the Ring in the Barad-dur is taken from Akallabêth (Silm, p. 280): "yet his [Sauron's] spirt arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dûr, and dwelt there ..."
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