Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is crowned the winner and showered with prizes, claiming his first strike against Rome. Messala is left with a broken body and the loss of his wealth. After the race, Judah Ben-Hur receives a letter from Iras asking him to go to the Roman palace of Idernee. When he arrives, he sees that he has been tricked. Thord, a Saxon hired by Messala, comes to kill Judah. They duel, and Ben-Hur offers Thord 4000 sestertii to let him live. Thord returns to Messala claiming to have killed Judah, so collects money from them both. Supposedly dead, Judah Ben-Hur goes to
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ the left, he caught Messala’s wheel with the iron-shod point of his axle, and crushed it". By the time of "Ben-Hur"'s publication in 1880, Wallace had already published his first novel, "The Fair God; or, The Last of the 'Tzins" (1873), and "Commodus: An Historical Play" (1876) that was never produced. He went on to publish several more novels and biographies, including "The Prince of India; or, Why Constantinople Fell" (1893), a biography of President Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and "The Wooing of Malkatoon" (1898), but "Ben-Hur" remained his most significant work and best-known novel. "Humanities" editor Amy Lifson named