Numenorean Population Sizes

"Sauron didn't command the variety of servants Morgoth had, but Tolkien wrote somewhere (the reference escapes me) that Sauron was, at the end of the Second Age, more personally powerful than Melkor had been at the end of the First Age, but that Sauron had become more militarily powerful at the end of the Third Age than he had been at the end of the Second Age."

Wow. The Ring made Sauron that powerful at the 2nd Age? But I seem to recall an article of yours saying Morgoth dissipated himself creating various creatures like Dragons, and generally permeating the very matter ("hroa" or something) of Arda. Control freak he is! So maybe Sauron's personal power didn't approach that of Melkor at his height.

Hey, that means if Elendil and Gil-GAlad could throw down Sauron in personal combat, they could wrestle Morgoth himself!!

Hmmm.... Beleriand was more "polluted" with Morgoth's essence than anywhere else? And thus more conducive to the practice of magic than anywhere else? So that some of the magical feats of Beleriand is not possible elsewhere? THe place most conducive to magic after the 1st Age would be the Grey Havens, which is adjacent to drowned Beleriand? Just following a train of thought that occured to me. Also some traces of Valaric power remaining in the seas over lost Beleriand...

Militarily Sauron was more powerful in the 3rd Age than in the 2nd, as you say Tolkien said. But was he stronger militarily in the War of the Ring than Morgoth at the start of the War of Wrath? The Silmarillion mentioned Orcs so plentiful that Anfauglith could scarce contain them, and dragons that threw back the Valar's forces.