Editing Battle of Helm's Deep (section)

== Analysis ==

=== Bayeux Tapestry style ===

{{further|Tolkien and the medieval}}

[[File:Odo bayeux tapestry.png|thumb|upright=1.25|Tolkien stated that the styles of the [[Bayeux Tapestry]] (detail shown) fitted the [[Rohirrim]] "well enough".<ref name="Letter 211" group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=No. 211 }}</ref>]]

In a 1958 letter to Rhona Beare, one of a group of enthusiasts, Tolkien stated that the Rohirrim "were not '[[Mediaeval]]' in our sense" (as the [[Third Age]] was meant to be thousands of years earlier) but that all the same "the styles of the [[Bayeux Tapestry]] (made in England) fit them well enough", explaining that the soldiers in the tapestry are wearing [[chain-mail]].<ref name="Letter 211" group=T/>

=== Shakespeare rewritten ===

{{further|Shakespeare's influence on Tolkien}}

Tolkien noted in a letter that he had created walking tree-creatures partly in response to his "bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Macbeth]]'' of the coming of 'Great [[Birnam Wood]] to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war".<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=#163, footnote }}</ref> The Tolkien scholar [[Tom Shippey]] calls it a "shock" that the battle is decided by having a forest of Huorns destroy Saruman's army of Orcs.{{sfn|Shippey|2005|page=184}}

=== Classical influence ===

{{further|Tolkien and the classical world}}

[[File:Lays of Ancient Rome.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Tolkien made use of [[Livy]]'s tale of the heroic bridge defence by [[Horatius Cocles]], perhaps partly via [[Thomas Babington Macaulay|Macaulay]]'s version in his 1842 ''[[Lays of Ancient Rome]]''.<ref name="Oughton 2022"/>]]

Charles Oughton likens the Battle of Helm's Deep to [[Livy]]'s account of [[Horatius Cocles]]'s heroic defence of Rome's [[Pons Sublicius]] bridge. The heroes Aragorn, [[Éomer]], and [[Gimli (Middle-earth)|Gimli]] hold off the army of Orcs; Horatius holds off the army of [[Etruscan civilization|Etruscans]] at the bridge. Oughton finds multiple matches between the two accounts. Several of these are not present in [[Thomas Babington Macaulay]]'s poem "[[Horatius (poem)|Horatius]]" which retells Livy's tale, though Oughton suggests that Tolkien did make additional use of Macaulay for some details.<ref name="Oughton 2022">{{cite journal |last=Oughton |first=Charles W. |title=Roman Heroes at Helm's Deep? |journal=Thersites |doi=10.34679/THERSITES.VOL15.214 |date=2022 |volume=15 There and Back Again: Tolkien and the Greco–Roman World (eds. Alicia Matz and Maciej Paprocki) |url=https://thersites-journal.de/index.php/thr/article/view/214}}</ref>