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Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2
Actually, that may not be quite true. I was recently reminded of this, the Elves are immortal, but they do seem to age...a little...very slowly, after reaching physical maturity.
Cirdan, for ex, was one of the oldest Elves. Of the three great Elda lords left in Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age (Elrond and Galadriel are the other two), he's vastly the oldest. He was part of the original migration of the Eldar westward, before the First Age. He was contemporary with King Finwe, King Thingol, and can remember the time before Thingol married Queen Melian, even by Elvish standards he's been around for a looonng time.
And he looks it, at least somewhat. Most male Elves are beardless, he has a white beard. He actually looks older than the other Elves.
That suggests to me that the Elves do age, very, very, very slowly, in time with the aging of the world.
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That's not entirely accurate. Galadriel was one of those who initially left Valinor with Feanor, and urged the Eldar to move eastward across Arda (she loved the forests). She was among the eldest of the surviving Eldar. As for beards, Tolkien never mentioned any facial hair among the Eldar at all - that was more a matter for the Second-Born, it would seem, not the First.
The Eldar do grow weary of the world, which is why they see Eru Iluvatar's gift of death to Men as just that, a gift. Men need not hang around endlessly in life after all joy is gone, but can choose to pass onward to whatever Iluvatar has prepared for them, while Elves must endure until called back to Valinor. (They still live in Valinor, but in a state of endless bliss, the state that Feanor and his followers turned their backs on in order to follow after Melkor's theft of the Silmarils.) Originally, in fact, the Edain of Numenor would live until life began to grow tiresome, then choose to pass after ensuring their successors were properly trained. It was Sauron who began reminding them of the fear of death that Morgoth had trained in them in the beginning, causing the kings of Numenor to insist on clinging to life as long as they possibly could.