Antioch arena. Wallace's novel depicts Judah as the aggressive competitor who wrecks Messala's chariot from behind and leaves him to be trampled by horses, in contrast to the 1959 film adaptation of Ben-Hur, where Messala is a villain who cheats by adding spikes to the wheels of his chariot. Wallace's novel explains that the crowd "had not seen the cunning touch of the reins by which, turning a little to the left, he caught Messala's wheel with the iron-shod point of his axle, and crushed it". Background By the time of Ben-Hurs 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 Ben-Hur as the most influential Christian book of the 19th century, while others have identified it as one of the best-selling novels of all time. Carl Van Doren wrote that Ben-Hur was, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin, the first fiction many Americans read. Wallace's original plan was to write a story of the biblical magi as a magazine serial, which he began in 1873, but he had changed its focus by 1874. Ben-Hur begins with the story of the magi, but the remainder of the novel connects the story of Christ with the adventures of Wallace's fictional character, Judah Ben-Hur. Influences Wallace cited one inspiration for Ben-Hur, recounting his life-changing journey and talk with Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a well-known agnostic and public speaker, whom he met on a train when the two were bound for Indianapolis on September 19, 1876. Ingersoll invited Wallace to join him in his railroad compartment during the trip. The two men debated religious ideology, and Wallace left the discussion realizing how little he knew about Christianity. He became determined to do his own research to write about the history of Christ. Wallace explained: "I was ashamed of myself, and make haste now to declare that the mortification of pride I then endured… ended in a resolution to study the whole matter, if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of