Mouth of Sauron

The Mouth of Sauron is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He appears in The Lord of the Rings — specifically in the chapter "The Black Gate Opens" in the third volume, The Return of the King — as the chief emissary of Sauron.

He belonged to the race of the Black Númenóreans and briefly appeared in person when he haggled with the Army of the West in front of the Black Gate (Morannon in Elvish), trying to convince Aragorn and Gandalf to give up and let Sauron win the war for Middle-earth. When Gandalf turned his proposal down, the Mouth of Sauron set all the armies of Mordor to attack them.

Also known as the Lieutenant of Barad-dûr, he had served Sauron for much of his life, learning great sorcery but forgetting his own name. As the Mouth of Sauron, "he entered the service of the Dark Tower when it first rose again". There is some dispute over the length of time this implies. If it refers to Sauron's most recent return to Mordor, the Mouth of Sauron would have served Sauron for some 68 years when he encountered Aragorn and Gandalf. But some have theorized that since Mordor "first rose again" during Sauron's return shortly after the destruction of Númenor, the Mouth of Sauron may be well over 3000 years old. This is unlikely since no mortal could live that long, and Tolkien says explicitly that he was a living man and not a wraith.

The Mouth uses Sauron's name although Aragorn states earlier in the second volume, The Two Towers, that Sauron does not "use his right name, nor permit it to be spelt or spoken". (Similarly, in "The Council of Elrond", Glóin describes a messenger who speaks of "Sauron the Great".) Christopher Tolkien conjectured that this inconsistency can be understood in terms of Aragorn's information being out of date, relating to Sauron's previously hidden identity.