Ecthelion of the Fountain was one of the lords of Gondolin, the hidden city of King Turgon, and the head of one of its houses. In The Silmarillion he is named almost only at his death, in a single sentence: in the sack of the city he slew Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, in the square of the King, and each slew the other.1
The story is told at more length in The Fall of Gondolin, the first of Tolkien's tales of the Elder Days, begun in 1916–17, while Tolkien was recovering from the Battle of the Somme. There Ecthelion, already wounded, leaps at Gothmog and drives the spike of his helm into the Balrog's breast, and the two fall together into the deep fountain of the King and are drowned.2
That tale belongs to the earliest stage of the legendarium. Tolkien never rewrote the scene, and the published chapter keeps only its outcome, so the early tale shows how he first imagined it rather than what the later story settled.2,1
Interpretation His death stands beside that of Glorfindel, who on the same night held off another Balrog in the pass of Cirith Thoronath so that the survivors could escape, and fell with it.1
The name lived on in Gondor. Two of the Ruling Stewards were called Ecthelion, the second of them Denethor's father.3
Sources
Citations name the chapter rather than the page, so they work in any edition. The colour of each note shows what kind of source it is.
- Appendices Tolkien's own appendices to The Lord of the Rings.
- Edited posthumously The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and Tolkien's late writings on the Elder Days, assembled by Christopher Tolkien from his father's papers.
- Drafts Earlier versions Tolkien changed or abandoned. Evidence of how the story grew, not of what is true in it.
- Edited posthumously The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, ch. 23, “Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin”
- Drafts The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (The History of Middle-earth, vol. 2), “The Fall of Gondolin”
- Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, I (iv), “Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion”