Timeline for How did Smaug know about the treasure within Erebor?

6 events

when toggle format	what		by	license	comment
Aug 10, 2013 at 13:04	comment	added	Rex Kerr		@MichaelBorgwardt - Smaug could have both been young and tender (compared to how he felt when Bilbo arrived), and still have been the greatest of dragons. It is not like there were terribly many of them by that point--most were killed in the War of Wrath.
Aug 10, 2013 at 9:55	comment	added	Michael Borgwardt		To me it seems to contradict the core of your answer: if Smaug was the greatest of the dragons at that time, he cannot have been young and vulnerable. Then again, the first paragraph in my answer does read as if all the dragons only became "strong again and multiplied" after the dwarves came to the Grey Mountains, which was less than a thousand years before the events of The Hobbit. All in all it seems to me that Tolkien paid only superficial attention to that part of the world's history.
Aug 10, 2013 at 9:35	comment	added	Ian Thompson		@MichaelBorgwardt --- that doesn't contradict anything in my answer.
Aug 10, 2013 at 8:51	comment	added	Michael Borgwardt		No; see the quote in my answer where Smaug is called "greatest of the dragons of his day" at the time he attacked Erebor.
Aug 9, 2013 at 21:51	history	edited	Ian Thompson	CC BY-SA 3.0	added 6 characters in body
Aug 9, 2013 at 21:35	history	answered	Ian Thompson	CC BY-SA 3.0