I have a question about historical memory in Tolkien, and I'm wondering a bit whether @BretDevereaux can answer it.
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...of Livy and Polybius are lost, and all we have are later summaries of their work. Often that means literally knowing, "An important battle at <place> happened in this year and <side> won." Sometimes we're left trying to sketch out the events of a decade from...
...really disjointed biographies (esp. Plutarch) because while there *were* narrative sources for these important battles, they don't survive. And that's with a fairly complete reckoning of all of the material that made it out of the classical past.
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Faramir's situation is worse: maybe the information exists, but it's in Rivendell (a long way away) and it may be in a language that few in Gondor speak. Getting that information means sending someone all the way to Rivendell - hardly a safe journey, as we see!
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And then probably getting it copied down into text, and getting that back to Minas Tirith for the production of further copies. Hard in a world as disconnected as Middle Earth, where the knowledge of the Dunedain in the North is mostly cut off from the south.
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That makes sense to me... but I still struggle with Isildur's end in particular, because it feels like "And then Caesar headed to the forum. Didn't come back for reasons that are now lost in the mists of history."
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Well, bear in mind - Isildur's death is in Third-Age 2. Faramir is born in TA 2983. There are some clearly *really* important Near Eastern Kings c. 900 B.C. that we know almost nothing about.
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