Quote:
Originally Posted by Pitchwife
The two of them probably were of roughly equal rank in the good old days under Morgoth,
|
I'm not so sure that the were of equal rank. Remember Sauron was Morgoth's Chief leutenant and (in his alternate idenity of Gorthmar) one of his most Sucessful generals. That likey put him rank-wise, on par with Gothmog (the Head Balrog, not the Nazgul) if not slightly higher. Durin's Bane isn't Gothmog, he/she/its is one of the lesser Balrogs. While you can speculate on how much differece there is in strength between an ordinary Balrog and Gothmog (a bit like speculating on how much stronger the WK is than an ordinary Nazgul) rank wise (from Morgoths army's standpoint) , Durin's Bane is likey far lower than Sauron.
Two other point, however come to mind which lean in favor of Sauron not being able to cow the Balrog if he so chose. One is the fact that, in terms of raw physical power Third age Sauron is probably much weaker than first age Sauron; he's lost so much in his continual defeat and returns. The Balrog on the other hand is probably roughly as strong as it was whne it first went under the mountain, if not as strong as it was in it's prime (it's had a long time to sleep and recover) Second Third age Sauron really doesn't move much (he goes from Dol Guldur to Barad Dur, but its not like we have a record of him doing anything on the trip so its more like a King or Emperor moving from his summer to his winter palace. All actual pysical "work" Sauron does is done through his servants and agents, like the Nazgul, who while capable do not, in an singe one of them (even the witch king) have the whole of thier masters power (if they did he could only have one of them by defintion) What I'm trying to get at is, if Sauron knew about the balrog and wanted to enslave it, it would probably require him to go to Moria
in person and even then it might not be enough.