J. R. R. Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources, especially medieval ones. Tolkien and the classical world have been linked by scholars, and by Tolkien himself. The suggested influences include the pervasive classical themes of divine intervention and decline and fall in Middle-earth; the splendour of the Atlantis-like lost island kingdom of Númenor; the Troy-like fall of Gondolin; the Rome-like stone city of Minas Tirith in Gondor; magical rings with parallels to the One Ring; and the echoes of the tale of Lúthien and Beren with the myth of Orpheus descending to the underworld. Other possible connections have been suggested by scholars.
In Roman legend, Aeneas escapes the ruin of Troy, while in Tolkien's legendarium, Elendil escapes Númenor. Painting Aeneas Flees Burning Troy by Federico Barocci, 1598
Decline and fall: the shattered ruins of the Roman city at Baalbek
Like the pantheon of Greek gods, Tolkien's Valar behave as a group, and act in Middle-earth through what appears as luck, or fate.
Tolkien's fire-serpents are paralleled by Virgil's great serpents that kill the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons in the fall of Troy.
Watcher in the Water
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The Watcher in the Water is a fictional creature in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth; it appears in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings. Lurking in a lake beneath the western walls of the dwarf-realm Moria, it is said to have appeared after the damming of the river Sirannon, and its presence was first recorded by Balin's dwarf company 30 or so years before the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Book illustration by John Howe
Gateway to Hell: the Fellowship's passage past the Watcher in the Water and through Moria's Doors of Durin has been compared to Odysseus's passage between the devouring Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Painting by Ary Renan, 1894