Balrogs
the demons of flame; the Maiar of the Shadow
Name and Nature
The Balrogs — in Quenya the Valaraukar, “the demons of flame” — are the Maiar who, in the deeps of the first ages, fell with Melkor and became the captains of his terror. The Valaquenta: — they are “spirits of the flame”, “the most terrible of the servants of the Dark” — the fires of their being, their shadows, their whips of flame: “the balrogs of Morgoth” — and of them the Quenta says — they retain the shape and power of the elder Ainur, perverted.
In the Tale
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The captains of Angband: Beneath their chief Gothmog (“the Lord of Balrogs”) they led the armies and the onsets; their hosts and deeds ring the battle-chronicles (the Dagor Bragollach, the Nirnaeth).
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Deeds of dread: A balrog slew Fëanor (mortally, at Thangorodrim) and, in the fullest accounts, Fingon at the Nirnaeth; bewitched and utter — the terrors of the age.
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The duels at Gondolin: In the Fall of the Hidden City, the balrogs broke in with the dragons, and met their match: Ecthelion slew Gothmog (both dying) and Glorfindel fell slaying a balrog at the pass — the only single-combats in which the demons of flame are overthrown by the Elves.
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And one of them survived long after the age, hidden beneath Caradhras, to be woken as “Durin’s Bane” of Moria in the Third Age — the last of their kind.
Significance
The Balrogs are Tolkien’s fire-demons — the fallen angels (in the myth’s Christian framework) made the soldiers of the Enemy; their number and even their nature (spirits vs. beasts) shifted through the versions (earlier: many; later: “like a great shadow” in number, “few”), and Christopher Tolkien’s commentary in Morgoth’s Ring and The Fall of Gondolin sorts the evidence.