Sauron's Power, greater than Melkor's?

[Archbob the Elder]

I was just wondering, in many places in the Simarillian, it states that Melkor's power has decreased from what it was. So if Sauron had gotten hold of the Ring, would be become more mighty than Melkor was during the first age?

[Mirahzi]

By power are you referring to individual power or the power of their combined forces? Melkor strengthened his servants by channeling his own power into them, thus decreasing himself, but enhancing them.

[Sister Golden Hair]

Sauron could never be more powerful then Morgoth for the simple fact that he was Maia, and not Vala. However, the Silmarillion say that in after years, Sauron rose like a shadow of Morgoth. I would take this to mean the he was probably as evil as Morgoth, but that does not mean more powerful.

[Tar-Elenion]

Notes on motives in the Silmarillion.
Sauron was 'greater', effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First. Why? Because, though he was far smaller by natural stature, he had not yet fallen so low. Eventually he also squandered his power (of being) in the endeavour to gain control of others. But he was not obliged to expend so much of himself. To gain domination over Arda, Morgoth had let most of his being pass into the physical constituents of the Earth - hence all things that were born on Earth and lived on and by it, beasts or plants or incarnate spirits, were liable to be 'stained'. Morgoth at the time of the War of the Jewels had become permanently 'incarnate': for this reason he was afraid, and waged the war almost entirely by means of devices, or of subordinates and dominated creatures.

Quoted from HoME 10.

[Ñólendil]

Tar-Elenion, I've missed you! Good to see you're posting here again. You've contributed to my Tolkien-studies significantly. You're the one who convinced me the new "scientific legendarium" was the way to go (though you were only trying to prove the idea lies behind the writing of the Lord of the Rings). I knew when I saw the title and that you had posted that you would bring up that quote.

[Tar-Elenion]

Hello Nolendil. Thank you for the complement. If you would like another 'proof' of the 'scientific' version in the published canon, try The Hobbit, Flies and Spiders: "They differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise. For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West. There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves went and lived for ages, and grew fairer and wiser and more learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft, in the making of beautiful and marvellous things, before some came back into the Wide World. In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk. Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People."