“The End of Sacrifice” -- Brent Shaw, the Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics and chair of the Program in the Ancient World at Princeton University.

Sacrifice was one of the essential acts that defined religious practice in the Greek and Roman worlds. The ending of any one form of sacrifice, as indeed the whole end of the traditional sacrificial system, marked a significant watershed in thinking and behavior. Shaw's talk will consider the end of human sacrifice in Africa under the Roman Empire.

Shaw’s principal areas of research are the demography and history of the Roman family and the regional history of Africa as part of the Roman Empire. His recently published books include a study of religious violence titled "Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine" (2011), and the third edition of a global history titled "Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World" (2010) written with other members of the history department at Princeton.