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Death; the gift of Eru Ilúvatar to Men. The Gift of Men allows the Younger of the Children of Ilúvatar to go beyond the confines of the World. After death, Men gather in the Halls of Mandos, then depart from the World to a destination unknown to the Valar.Sauron lacks the power to completely deny the fate of Men. The Rings of Power he gave to the Nine stretched their lives far beyond the natural time they should spend in Middle-Earth, but they were still born as Men. Yes, they were very evil, but they would share the same fate as all other evil Men in the world. They would pass beyond the circles of the world. While the One Ring remained, they seemed to be bound to its fate. It makes sense that with the destruction of the Witch-King’s form, he would be a powerless spirit remaining in Middle-Earth until the destruction of his source of corruption. It shows the power of the One Ring and Sauron in the fact that he was able to delay the removal of these Men from Middle-Earth.It is a similar situation with the Dead Men of Dunharrow, who were cursed by a to remain in Middle-Earth as oathbreakers until their oath was fulfilled. No Rings of Power and no departure from Arda. We also have the Barrow-wights who remain as creatures in Middle-Earth, despite their lifespan exceeding what you would call natural.It seems that in the cases of wraiths, wights and ghosts, all have actually died in some way or they at least live in an unnatural state, and the Gift of Men has been delayed. They will still pass beyond the circles of the world. Power exists to delay the Gift of Men as we see in all the cases I have listed, but it can’t be completely denied, by Sauron or Manwë. Does this mean that Eru himself will judge the deeds of Men as they pass? We aren’t told. Do evil Men spend more time in a period of reflection before being taken beyond Arda? We also don’t know.So as the One Ring is destroyed and the ringwraiths are released from its power, their spirits will go to the same place as other Men. Their fate is the same as the fate of all Men. Eru had made it so and only Eru could change this:‘But Men were more frail, more easily slain by weapon or mischance, and less easily healed; subject to sickness and many ills; and they grew old and died. What may befall their spirits after death the Elves know not. Some say that they too go to the halls of Mandos; but their place of waiting there is not that of the Elves, and Mandos under Ilúvatar alone save Manwë knows whither they go after the time of recollection in those silent halls beside the Outer Sea. None have ever come back from the mansions of the dead, save only Beren son of Barahir, whose hand had touched a Silmaril; but he never spoke afterward to mortal Men. The fate of Men after death, maybe, is not in the hands of the Valar, nor was all foretold in the Music of the Ainur.’The Silmarillion - The History of the Silmarils, Of Men

It's a very good question, to which I can't give a definitive answer.The Valar have a rather complex and ambiguous relationship to Elves, Men, and Morgoth. They fought several wars against Morgoth, and imprisoned him, but once released they gave him free rein over Middle Earth for an entire age. It wasn't until Eärendil the Mariner came to beg for help that they put an end to Morgoth forever, and it's rather perplexing that they should bother to be swayed after thousands of years of doing nothing.They had been ignoring Middle Earth in part as a way to be done with the Noldor, who had rebelled against them and been banished. In fact, before the First Age, they decided to deal with Morgoth by simply summoning all of the Elves away to Valinor, where they could be protected. Which didn't actually work, and that's why the Noldor left: to take vengeance on Morgoth themselves, which the Valar were unwilling to do. Maybe the Valar could be forgiven for failing to help the Noldor, but Men didn't do anything to deserve being left to Morgoth, and I think it's pretty crappy of the Valar to get all high-and-mighty about the "evil" men of the East and South.In other words... all through the First Age, the Valar took a pretty hands-off approach to the world they were supposedly sent to manage. When they did finally show up, the resulting war destroyed vast areas. And that was the last time the Valar showed up directly in Middle Earth. They got rid of Morgoth, but got tricked by Sauron into leaving him free, and he seems just as bad.During the Second Age, the Valar took an even more hands-off approach. Middle Earth was left to Sauron, while the Valar's preferred tribes were given an island paradise in Numenor. But they were forbidden from trying to go to Valinor, and after a few thousand years, the men got pretty cranky about it. They were spurred by Sauron's lies, but how were they to know that they were lies? The Valar didn't so much as show their faces.Ultimately, the Valar gave up entirely. Ilúvatar intervened directly, sinking Numenor into the sea and turning the earth from a flat map to a globe. The Valar were now permanently beyond the reach of human beings. It's very much as if the Valar are perfectly content to leave Men to their own devices. Only the Elves can leave Middle Earth via the Straight Road, and the Elves had essentially left by the end of the Second Age. Only a few remain behind, and they're leaving. We witness the last of their departures at the end of the Third Age.Thus began the Fourth Age, the Age of Men, and apparently we're on our own. The Valar, for whatever reasons, just don't seem to want to have much to do with us.They did help, a little during the Third Age, but not directly. They sent the Istari, but frankly, they seem to have mostly screwed that up. They sent only five. Two disappeared immediately. One was more fascinated with the animals than with either Men or Elves. One turned to evil. Only one, Mithrandir, was any help at all, and while he was critical to the success, it was primarily in the form of advice.Why is it that the Valar care so little for Men? That's never made entirely clear. Men have their "strange gifts" from Ilúvatar, the ability to truly leave the world and to have genuine free will in a way that the Elves and even the Valar may not quite have. Men aren't crazy about their special gifts, and frankly Tolkien himself never quite managed to put his finger on what was so great about them.The best I can figure out is that the Men have some unique role to play in the history of Arda. They seem to require the presence of discordant notes in the Music of the Ainur to fulfill their special purpose. Ilúvatar said from the beginning that even the evil deeds of Melkor would come to good. Men seem to be an integral part of that, in ways that not even the Valar know, and their best solution appears to be to leave it alone.

From the late antique & mediæval Roman tradition, three stand out - not merely on account of their gender, but their character and scholarship as well.Saint Eudocia the Queen (AD 401–60, Aelia Eudocia Augusta, born Athenaïs) straddles the worlds of pagan philosophy and Christian theology; daughter to Leontius, a rhetorician teaching at Plato’s still-operative Academy of Athens, she received a broad education in the grand old fashion, apparently learning both Homer and Pindar by heart. The story goes that, though she was her father’s favourite and alone ministered to him in his declining years, he denied her a share in the inheritance, because “her mind and her destiny would be inheritance enough” next to that of her boorish brothers. Going to Constantinople to make an appeal for the Emperor’s personal intervention in her inheritance, she instead found her equal in age, Theodosius II (r. 402–50) to be an eligible bachelor of twenty years; and married him at the recommendation of his sister, the later co-Empress Pulcheria (she wrote her brother,“[I have] found a young girl, a Greek maid, very beautiful, pure and dainty, eloquent as well, the daughter of a philosopher”). She supposedly amply rewarded her brothers with salaries and offices for indirectly leading her to this good fortune.Her stint on the throne was less than idyllic; during the 20 years she effectively held the office she came into conflict with other factions seeking to control the Emperor, chiefly his sister Pulcheria (who installed herself as a co-regnant Empress, equal to her brother, a position Eudocia never held) — and their relationship deteriorated as a result. Eudocia’s historically memorable deeds from this period chiefly consist in her conscious efforts to appeal to both the Christian and pagan traditions, e.g. her greeting the assembly of the ancient city of Antioch with Hellenistic poetry alluding to “our shared race and blood”, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, acts of which kind earned her deep and lasting affection among the populace, as well as a gold statue in the Antiochene curia.Her final break with her husband, his sister and the court was marked by accusations of adultery, which led to the alleged lover - the master of ceremonies Paulinus, a childhood friend of the emperor and partisan of the empress since her arrival - losing his head, and Eudocia herself forced into internal exile in Palestine at the intercession of a prominent lady in Syria, St. Melania.These last years of her life contain much of her literary production, including the partially surviving Martyrdom of St. Cyprian, an epic poem which makes a literary narrative out of the (likely fictional) story of Saints Cyprian and Justina. The main character, the pagan-turned-Christian Justina, changing her name from the pagan Justa, parallels Eudocia herself - and is tempted for 70 days by the sorcerer Cyprian, who is in the pay of the lustful and wealthy Aglaidas. Failing, Cyprian and Aglaidas try to strike a Faustian bargain with Belial, until Cyprian himself converts and becomes bishop of Antioch by Justina’s example. From her we also have over 2.300 lines of Homeric cento (i.e. memorized lines from Homer arranged to express Christian devotions and ideas). Here is a portion of Cyprian, a much earlier Faust, in English - which sadly ruins any sense of poetic meter, but is I think interesting in its own right.But (Aglaidas) gathered a crowd, since he intendedto defile the holy maiden by force among the Lord’s seats.Those who were following her shouted greatly,and everyone rushed out of the rooms with weaponsand forthwith caused Aglaidas‘ oncomers to disappear.But because he held pure lust in his heartand as if struck with blindness, he hid himself to try to grab the girl.But she immediately performed the powerful sign of Christ,threw the wretch forthwith on his back, and with her hands toreAglaidas‘ body as well as his cheeks with their curly foam.She rent his beautiful clothes and in all she caused laughter,since she ran the same course as glorious Thecla.After she did these things, she returned to the house of God…But Aglaidas grew angry and requested of an evil man,Cyprian, the counseler of impious magic,offering to him two talents of goldand of shining silver, that he compel by forcethe maiden, however unwilling she be, to consent…Aglaidas did not know the power of Christ, the untiring one.Because the magician pitied the wretch, with an invocationhe quickly summoned an irksome, evil-working demon.When he quickly arrived, he said, “Why do you call on me? Speak.“Aglaidas said, “The love for one Galilean girlhas tamed me terribly in my heart. Tell me, whether you arepowerful enough to bring her to my bed, for I deeply desire her.“The dimwitted adversary agreed to give that which should not be hoped for.And Cyprian immediately addressed the villain,“Tell me your deeds, so that I might have confidence.“And the demon answered, “I was once the best of the angelic ranks,but in obeying my father, I abandoned the highest Lordof the seven-vaulted sphere. All that I have done,you shall know: I will relate it. The foundations of the pure heaventhrough my wickedness I myself shook up and divided in two;I cast an array of the heavenly host to earth;in turn, I deceived Eve, the mother of mortals, by force;I separated Adam from delightful paradise;I myself made the hand of Cain fratricidal;I drenched the earth with blood, and it (the earth) bears thornyand meager fruit for the race of mortals all because of me.I accomplished wonders inimical to God–I madeadulterous beds, I beguiled the human mindto worship feeble idols, and I revealed to menhow to make a sacrifice to a horrid bull.I myself urged the Hebrews destructively to stretch on a crossthe mighty Word of God, the eternal Son.I have confounded cities and thrown down their high walls.By dancing a jig, I derail many marriages with strife.Since I have accomplished all these evils and countless others,how will I not also obtain this holy, sagacious maiden?“[…]The adversary answered, “listen to me, and I will tell you the truth:All the things we do here in shameful sin,handing mortal men over to error,is befitting for us all. But in yonder lifethere is a curved instrument of bronze whichlies aflame in their midst; whoever sins,mortal or angel, the heavenly beings with itimmediately bear him to the judgment seat of Christ who was crucified.“And Cyprian enjoined, “Come now, go away, for I amquickly falling in love (with him); oblige me speedily. Idesire him who loved the cross so that I not suffer similar things.“The putrid demon replied, “After swearing a great oathdo you care to break it?“ Cyprian answered, “Tell me, wretch,what sort of oath have I now sworn to you?“ The demon said,“(An oath) by my strong powers.“ The magician responded,“I am in fear neither of you nor your deeds, hostile one,since on this night I have learned from you the whole truthbecause of the maiden’s prayers and holy entreatiesand because of the mighty cross. You are very impotent.For that reason, I will now place on my limbs the powerful signwhich you admit is indeed effectual.I also reject your friendship thereby renouncing your counsels.”And Cyprian returned homeand reduced to dust his images of useless idolsand all the gloomy night he whipped his bodysaying, “How would I appear in the eyes of Christsince I have done so many evils? How would I praise Godwith my lips that I used to slight others,even calling upon wretched demons?”St. Kassiane the Hymnist (810–65) was a composer as well as a poet; chiefly remembered for her work still sung in the Greek liturgy. Her story goes that she was an erudite daughter of a well-to-do family of the City, who was attracted to letters from a young age. In her time, the young Theophilus (r. 829–42) was also looking for a bride; and organised a large presentation of prospective brides, in which he would present the lady of choice with a golden apple in the fashion of prince Paris of Trojan War fame (the “Judgement of Paris” was between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, the last of whom promised him Helen in return for the apple). Kassiane was among the contestants; on approaching her with the apple, Theophilus told her “Ἐκ γυναικὸς τὰ χείρω” (from woman came all ills - referring to Eve), to which she responded with “Kαὶ ἐκ γυναικὸς τὰ κρείττω” (And from woman came all things good - referring to Panayia/Mary the Mother-of-God). Deciding that the young lady did not have the traits necessary for a wife, Theophilus gave the apple to the future empress Theodora instead.Kassiane would retire to the monastic life, founding her own monastic community within the walls of Constantinople; the story goes that Theophilus, still in love with her, came to visit — in response to which she hid in a closet. Finding her unfinished papers on a desk, and guessing that she was somewhere in the house, he added a line of his own and left - later, Kassiane finished her Tropary, the appeal of Mary Magdalene giving myrrh to Christ in His tomb.(Kassiane:) Κύριε, ἡ ἐν πολλαῖς ἁμαρτίαις περιπεσοῦσα γυνή,Lord, this woman fallen to many a sin,τὴν σὴν αἰσθομένη θεότητα, μυροφόρου ἀναλαβοῦσα τάξιν,feeling your divinity, became a bearer of myrrhὀδυρομένη, μύρα σοι, πρὸ τοῦ ἐνταφιασμοῦ κομίζει.and wailed, bringing you myrrh before your burialΟἴμοι! λέγουσα, ὅτι νύξ μοι ὑπάρχει, οἶστρος ἀκολασίας,Woe! saying, that a night is within me, a den of iniquityζοφώδης τε καὶ ἀσέληνος ἔρως τῆς ἁμαρτίας.black and moonless and loving sinΔέξαι μου τὰς πηγὰς τῶν δακρύων,Accept these springs of my tearsὁ νεφέλαις διεξάγων τῆς θαλάσσης τὸ ὕδωρYou who carry the water of the sea in cloudsκάμφθητί μοι πρὸς τοὺς στεναγμοὺς τῆς καρδίας,Bend to the sighs of my heart,ὁ κλίνας τοὺς οὐρανοὺς τῇ ἀφάτῳ σου κενώσει.you who bent heaven in your ineffable incarnation [lit. emptying]Καταφιλήσω τοὺς ἀχράντους σου πόδας,I’ll plenteously kiss your unstained feet,ἀποσμήξω τούτους δὲ πάλιν τοῖς τῆς κεφαλῆς μου βοστρύχοιςand wipe them again with the hairs on my headὧν ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ Εὔα τὸ δειλινόν,[it was these feet which] Eve in paradise one morning(Theophilus:) κρότον τοῖς ὠσὶν ἠχηθεῖσα, τῷ φόβῳ ἐκρύβη.heard the sound, and hid in fear.(Kassiane:) Ἁμαρτιῶν μου τὰ πλήθη καὶ κριμάτων σου ἀβύσσουςOf my many sins and of your mercies the abyssτίς ἐξιχνιάσει, ψυχοσῶστα Σωτήρ μου;who can unravel, my soul-saving Saviour?Μή με τὴν σὴν δούλην παρίδῃς, ὁ ἀμέτρητον ἔχων τὸ ἔλεος.Do not hold [me] your slave in contempt, you in possession of boundless mercy.The Tropary of Kassiane, sung by Nektaria Karantzi:And last, but not least, Anna Comnene (1083–1153), doubtless the most famous of the three. A daughter of the soldier-emperor Alexius (r. 1081-1118), her claim to fame is the authorship of the Alexiad in 15 volumes, a landmark work which is one of our few first-hand sources for her era - and although she herself notes her motive for the work is motivated by family ties, it is both informative and penetrating, stopping well short of being a royal panegyric.Anna herself was not only well-educated in both Christian and classical traditions (the latter against her parents’ will); but was in her time a serious contender and longtime heir apparent to the throne as one born-in-the-purple, and after her failure to seize the position (in favour of her brother John) was confined to a monastery, a typical situation for threatening or deposed princes.From the introduction to the Alexiad:Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things, and drowns them in the depths of obscurity, no matter if they be quite unworthy of mention, or most noteworthy and important, and thus, as the tragedian says, "he brings from the darkness all things to the birth, and all things born envelops in the night." [Sophocles Ajax, 646]But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and to some extent checks its irresistible flow, and, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over, it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.Now, I recognized this fact. I, Anna, the daughter of two royal personages, Alexius and Irene, born and bred in the purple. I was not ignorant of letters, for I carried my study of Greek to the highest pitch, and was also not unpractised in rhetoric; I perused the works of Aristotle and the dialogues of Plato carefully, and enriched my mind by the "quaternion" [the advanced liberal arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy] of learning. (I must let this out and it is not bragging to state what nature and my zeal for learning have given me, and the gifts which God apportioned to me at birth and time has contributed).However, to resume - I intend in this writing of mine to recount the deeds done by my father so they should certainly not be lost in silence, or swept away, as it were, on the current of time into the sea of forgetfulness, and I shall recount not only his achievements as Emperor, "But also the services he rendered to various Emperors before he himself received the sceptre.These deeds I am going to relate, not in order to shew off my proficiency in letters, but that matters of such importance should not be left unattested for future generations. For even the greatest of deeds, if not haply preserved in written words and handed down to remembrance, become extinguished in the obscurity of silence.Now, my father, as the actual facts prove, knew both how to command and how to obey the rulers within reasonable limits. And though I have chosen to narrate his doings, yet I fear that the tongues of suspicion and detraction will whisper that writing my father's history is only self laudation and that the historical facts and any praise I bestow on them, are mere falsehoods and empty panegyric. Again, on the other hand, if he himself were to supply the materials, and facts themselves force me to censure some of his actions, not because of him, but from the very nature of the deed, I dread the scoffers who will cast Noah's son, Ham, in my teeth, for they look at everything askew, and owing to their malice and envy, do not discern dearly what is right, but will "blame the blameless " as Homer says.But he who undertakes the role of a historian must sink his personal likes and dislikes, and often award the highest praise to his enemies when their actions demand it, and often, too, blame his nearest relations if their errors require it. He must never shirk either blaming his friends or praising his enemies. I should counsel both parties, those attacked by us and our partisans alike, to take comfort from the fact that I have sought the evidence of the actual deeds themselves, and the testimony of those who have seen the actions, and the men and their actions—the fathers of some of the men now living, and the grandfathers of others were actual eye-witnesses.The reason which finally determined me to write my father's history was the following. My lawful husband was the Caesar Nicephorus, a scion of the clan of the Bryennii, a man who far outshone his contemporaries by his surpassing beauty, his superior intelligence, and his accurate speech. To look at him, or to listen to him, was a pure delight. But I must not let my tale wander from its path, so for the present let us keep to the main story. My husband, as I said, was most remarkable in every way; he accompanied my brother John, the Emperor, on several other expeditions against the barbarians ... as well as on the one against . . . who held the city of Antioch. As Nicephorus could not abide neglecting his literary work, he wrote several excellent monographs even during times of stress and trouble. But his task of predilection was that enjoyed by the Queen, to wit, a compilation of the history of the reign of Alexius, Emperor of the Romans, and my father, and to set out the doings of his reign in books whenever opportunity granted him a short respite from strife and warfare, and the chance of turning his mind to his history, and literary studies. Moreover, he approached this subject from an earlier period (for in this detail too he obeyed the will of our mistress), and starting from Diogenes, Emperor of the Romans, he worked down to the man about whom he had himself purposed to write.At the accession of Diogenes my father had just entered upon his brilliant youth and before this was not even a full-grown boy, and had done nothing worthy of recording, unless, forsooth, the deeds of his childhood were made the theme of a panegyric.Such then was the Caesar's intention as his own writing shews; but his hopes were not fulfilled, and he did not complete his history. He brought it down to the Emperor Nicephorus Botaniates, and opportunity forbade his carrying it further, thus causing loss to the events he meant to describe, and depriving his readers of a great pleasure. For this reason, I myself undertook to chronicle my father's doings, that the coming generations should not overlook deeds of such importance.]Now, the harmonious structure and great charm of the Caesar's writings are well-known to all who have chanced to take a look at his books. However, as I have already mentioned, when he had got as far as my father's reign, and sketched out a draft of it, and brought it back to us half-finished from abroad, he also, alas! brought back with him a fatal disease. This was induced, maybe, by the endless discomfort of a soldier's life, or by his over-many expeditions, or again, from his overwhelming anxiety about us, for worrying was innate in him, and his troubles were incessant. In addition to these causes, the varieties and severities of climate experienced, all contributed to mix the fatal draught for him. For he started hence on an expedition against the Syrians and Cilicians when seriously out of health; from Syria he went on ill to the Cilicians, from them to the Pamphylians, from the Pamphylians to the Lydians, and Lydia sent him on to Bithynia, who finally returned him to us and to the Queen of cities suffering from an internal tumour caused by his incessant sufferings. Yet, ill as he was, he was anxious to tell the tragic story of his adventures, but was unable to do so, partly because of his disease, and partly because [4] we forbade it through fear that the effort of talking might cause the tumour to burst.Having written so far, dizziness overwhelms my soul, and tears blind my eyes. Oh! what a counsellor the Roman Empire has lost! Oh, for his accurate understanding of affairs, all of which he had gained from experience! And his knowledge of literature, and his varied acquaintance with both native and foreign learning! Think, too, of the grace of his figure and beauty of face, which would have befitted not only a king, as the saying goes, but even a more powerful, nay, a divine person!To turn to myself—I have been conversant with dangers ever since my birth "in the purple," so to say; and fortune has certainly not been kind to me, unless you were to count it a smile of kind fortune to have given me "emperors" as parents, and allowing me to be born "in the purple room," for all the rest of my life has been one long series of storms and uprisings. Orpheus, indeed, could move stones, trees, and all inanimate nature, by his singing; Timotheus, too, the flute-player, by piping an "orthian" tune to Alexander, incited the Macedonian thereby to snatch up his arms and sword; lout the tale of my woes would not cause a movement in place, nor rouse men to arms and war, but they would move the hearer to tears, and compel sympathy from animate, and even inanimate, nature. Verily, my grief for my Caesar and his unexpected death have touched my inmost soul, and the wound has pierced to the profoundest depths of my being. All previous misfortunes compared with this insatiable calamity I count literally as a single small drop compared with this Atlantic Ocean, this turbulent Adriatic Sea of trouble: they were, methinks, but preludes to this, mere smoke and heat to forewarn me of this fiery furnace and indescribable blaze; the small daily sparks foretold this terrible conflagration. Oh! thou fire which, though unfed, dost reduce my heart to ashes! Thou burnest and art ever kept alight in secret, yet dost not consume. Though thou scorchest my heart thou givest me the outward semblance of being unburnt, though thy fingers of fire have gripped me even to the marrow of my bones, and to the dividing of my soul! However, I see that I have let my feelings carry me away from my subject, but the mention of my Caesar and my grief for him have instilled devastating sorrow into me.Now I will wipe away my tears and recover myself from my sorrow and continue my task, and thus in the words of the tragedian; "I shall have double cause for tears, as a woman who in misfortune remembers former misfortune." [Euripides, Hecuba 518] To have as my object the publication of the life of so great and virtuous a King will be a reminder of his wondrous achievements, and these force me to shed warm tears, and the whole world will weep with me. For to recall him, and make his reign known, will be a subject of lamentation to me, but will also serve to remind others of the loss they have sustained.^ Anna Comnene, by an unknown Russian artistWhile she is doubtless one of the most known and celebrated figures in Greek literary history, our poet Cavafy composed a rather scathing poem in her memory:In the prologue to the Alexiad laments,for her widowhood Anna the Comnene.In tumult her soul is. «Andrivers of tears», she tells us, «I shedat the eyes… alas, these waves» of her life,«alas, these uprisings». The pain burns her,«to the bones and marrow, tearing at the soul».But in truth it seems one pain aloneof import this ambitious woman knew·one deep passion alone was had(though she may not admit it) by this proud Grecian woman,that she never could, for all her skill,the Empire attain· but it was seized,almost from her hands, by the upstart John.