Judah Ben-Hur realising that forgiveness is more important than revenge. Esther becomes his wife and the mother of his children. Five years after the chariot race, Judah learns from Iras that she killed Messala. In approximately AD 64 (being the tenth year of Nero's reign), Judah finds out about the suffering of their fellow Christians. He gives his fortune to help construct the Catacomb of Callixtus and an underground church within the catacombs. In the Ben-Hur was portrayed by Ramon Novarro. In the 1959 film directed by William Wyler, Ben-Hur was played by Charlton Heston who won the Academy Award for Best
Ben-Hur (1959 film) which was released on Lion Records (an MGM subsidiary which issued low-priced records) in 1959. This made the "Ben-Hur" film musical score the first to be released not only in its entirety but also as a separate album. The "Ben-Hur" score has been considered the best of Rózsa's career. The musical soundtrack to "Ben-Hur" remained deeply influential into the mid 1970s, when film music composed by John Williams for films such as "Jaws", "", and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" became more popular among composers and film-goers. Rózsa's score has since seen several notable re-releases, including by the Nuremberg Symphony