Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Balthasar is a learned Egyptian man and one of the three men who visit Jesus in the manger. Balthasar has studied the ancient texts of his homeland for decades and concludes that the true nature of God has been obscured over the years. After much prayer, Balthasar witnesses the Messiah’s birth.

At the start of the story, Balthasar is already old with a long white beard and becomes weaker as the narrative progresses through the years. Having witnessed Christ’s birth, Balthasar spends the rest of his life trying to find Christ again and support him in his divine mission. It is Balthasar who first perceives that the Messiah’s mission is to redeem the world spiritually rather than to liberate Judea politically from Roman rule, though he is unable to persuade Ilderim, Simonides, or Ben-Hur of this until the Crucifixion. Balthasar is so kind and gentle that he is almost naive, failing to notice his daughter’s impiety or treachery.

Simonides is a successful Jewish merchant in Antioch. Earlier in his life, he was a enslaved and in the service of Ben-Hur’s father. When the Hurs are arrested and their property seized, Simonides continues to operate the family’s business concerns. The Romans torture him, trying to confiscate any remaining funds of the Hurs. Simonides’s spirit is indomitable, and he refuses to tell the Romans anything despite being subjected to torture that results in his physical disabilities.

Simonides’s shrewdness shows itself when he refuses to give up his business holdings to Ben-Hur before collecting proof of the young man’s identity. As it turns out, he is happy to turn his holdings back over to Ben-Hur so long as his daughter, Esther, remains with Simonides. Although Simonides believes what he has heard about the birth of the Messiah and his imminent appearance, he is the most skeptical of Balthasar’s ideas about the nature of the Messiah’s mission, only coming to accept the truth as a witness to the Crucifixion.

Messala is an arrogant, cruel, and debauched Roman nobleman. He and Ben-Hur were friends as children but, after Messala’s return from his education in Rome, the cultural and spiritual divide between the two has become insurmountable. When Ben-Hur rejects him as a friend, Messala commits himself to the ruin of his former comrade. It is hinted at one or two points that Messala is sexually attracted to Ben-Hur—even calling him “my Ganymede”—and that this is the explanation for the intensity of his anger toward Ben-Hur (220).

Messala’s ethics are directed toward his own self-aggrandizement, stating, “[W]e have no Gods, only Wine, Women, and Fortune, and the greatest of them is Fortune” (189). He effectively represents the stereotypes and misunderstandings inherent in the theme of The “East and Orientalism, as he is meant to be read as the living embodiment of supposed “pagan” decadence and moral depravity.

Throughout the novel, Wallace typically refers to Jesus Christ as The Nazarene. Jesus has delicate features with large, sad eyes and waves of chestnut hair. This generally matches visual depictions of Jesus contemporary to the novel’s publication in America in 1880. Jesus’s physical description contrasts noticeably with that of the other Jewish characters of the story whose “Semitic features”—large nose, bushy eyebrows, large lips—are not possessed by Jesus. Aside from the scene in which Jesus offers Ben-Hur a cup of water when Ben-Hur is being marched to the galley to be enslaved, Jesus’s actions in the novel are taken entirely from the Gospels.

Iras is Balthasar’s daughter. She is depicted as haughty and vain, repeatedly enjoying the stir which her beauty causes in public. She dresses and adorns herself in what Wallace describes as “Egyptian style” with heavy makeup around her eyes and as much jewelry as she can wear. Iras’s interest in a man is solely the function of how close they can get her to power and wealth. At one point, she instructs Ben-Hur to simply call her “Egypt,” a nod toward her role in the novel as a personification of perceptions of the “East” as “sensuous,” “corrupt,” and “godless.”

Ilderim rules the desert areas east of Antioch. Herod and the Romans supposedly commissioned him to ensure the safety of those traveling the roads of Syria and Judea, but Ilderim does as he likes. He has a long-standing grievance against Rome, who once used Ilderim’s property to replenish their lost tax monies. Ben-Hur uses Ilderim’s encampment at Orchard of Palms as a residence while he is preparing for the chariot race. Ilderim is an Arab man and passionately attached to his camels and horses. He is prone to outbursts of emotion in which he tears at his long, white beard.

Malluch is Simonides’s loyal and dependable servant, often serving as the merchant’s eyes and ears wherever discretion is required. When Ben-Hur first arrives in Antioch, Simonides sends Malluch to learn about the young man.

Esther is Simonides’s daughter. She is shy and modest and, despite being beautiful, does not make much of an impression upon Ben-Hur for most of the time he knows her. She is explicitly compared to Iras and serves as the pious, humble, and dutiful foil to Iras’s profanity, vanity, and treacherousness. Esther is presented as innocent and unworldly.

Tirzah is Ben-Hur’s younger sister. Her physical description is close to that of Esther, and she is similarly innocent, shy, and demure.

No name is ever given for Ben-Hur’s mother. By the time the story comes to Ben-Hur, she is a widow living in the estate of her dead husband. She is very beautiful and noble in bearing with great inner strength. She is proud of her ancestry and the accomplishments of Jewish people, holding them to be greater than that of other nations because they have always first been rendered on behalf of God.

Amrah is an Egyptian woman enslaved by the Hur family. She is single-mindedly devoted to the Hurs, even allowing the Romans to board up the deserted Hurs’ house while she remains inside.

Quintus Arrius is a duumvir of Rome—another term for the chief executive officers of Rome, usually termed “consuls.” He meets Ben-Hur when he is sent to command a fleet hunting pirates in the Aegean, and Ben-Hur is stationed on the galley on Arrius’s flagship. Arrius is a seasoned commander who is well accustomed to preparations for combat. When his flagship is sunk, Ben-Hur pulls him onto a piece of flotsam and saves him. Because of Ben-Hur’s service to him, as well as already existing good will toward his father, Arrius adopts Ben-Hur and names him heir, allowing Ben-Hur to inherit wealth and an estate in Italy.