# Arjillax — Back to Methuselah character guide

> Arjillax in Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Arjillax Frowning, Arjillax Ask Martellus

**First appearance:** 0061-part-v-as-far-as-thought-can-reach

## Snapshot

A figure of the future's political order, occupied with the governance of a world that has outgrown the passions politics was invented to manage.

## Who they are

Arjillax moves among the administrators and guardians of the long-lived world, where authority is exercised through fields, rules, and quiet discouragement rather than through force. His concerns are procedural and territorial in the way any governing mind's are, and he treats the arrival of short-lived visitors as a problem of regulation rather than a wonder. He matters because he shows what government becomes when the governed no longer die: patient, impersonal, and almost unrecognizable as politics, which is precisely the point Shaw is making about institutions that outlive their reasons.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/back_to_methuselah_se/characters/arjillax
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/back_to_methuselah_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/back_to_methuselah_se/characters