My main goal in writing this book has been to illustrate that the history of early Christian women includes the public reaction to their lives. I have shown that an understanding of how women figured in public opinion about the church furthers our knowledge of early Christian women in several important ways. Most obviously, the collection of references to church women by second-century critics highlights the presence of women in public impressions of Christianity. Previous treatments of pagan reaction to early Christianity have stressed that an outsider's perspective should be valued as an alternative source of information about church groups to that available from Christian sources. I have argued a similar case with respect to what can be known about Christian women from non-Christian sources. The pagan critics convey information about such important matters as the evangelical efforts of women, the nature of their leadership roles, and the general shape of their daily lives as celibate and married women.

Beyond offering us interesting information about women's lives which complements and, at times, even challenges conclusions about the history of Christian women based on Christian texts, the comments of the second-century pagan critics analysed in Part 1 contribute to our comprehension of the interaction between church groups and Greco-Roman society.