The Race That Never Ended: The Making of Ben Hur

Ben-Hur’s enduring saga begins with a painting that sparked centuries of spectacle and reinvention.

The Race That Never Ended tells the extraordinary story of Ben-Hur, the epic that has galloped across centuries, cultures, and media. It begins not with Lew Wallace’s famous novel, but with a painting: The Chariot Race, an 1870s masterpiece that captured the drama of ancient Rome before Wallace ever set pen to paper. This early vision of spectacle laid the groundwork for the story that would b...