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
Production of Ben-Hur (1959 film) character touches to the script, such as Ben-Hur's purchase of a brooch for Tirzah and a horse for Messala. Vidal claimed that he worked on the first half of the script (everything up to the chariot race), and scripted 10 versions of the scene where Ben-Hur confronts Messala and begs for his family's freedom. Vidal's claim about a homoerotic subtext is hotly debated. Vidal first made the claim in an interview in the 1995 documentary film "The Celluloid Closet", and asserted that he persuaded Wyler to direct Stephen Boyd to play the role as if he were a spurned homosexual