Rome in Middle-earth Echoes of a past to come

Ancient Rome belongs to the future, the present, and the past of Middle-earth. In the future, because, from his first writings, Tolkien places his Legendary in a world prior to Antiquity. To the present, because the history of Gondor is, in part, a rewriting of Roman imperial history. Finally, from the past, because Tolkien borrows from certain late antique and medieval texts the memory of a lost Rome awaiting restoration