Pagan women faced a great social pressure to remarry; many pagan women were even fined if they did not remarry within two years of becoming a widow. When a pagan woman did remarry she lost everything she had inherited to her new husband. Christian women were highly respected after becoming a widow and getting remarried was only mildly discouraged. This enabled Christian women to keep their husbands estates. There was also another major part to the many benefits Christian women had over pagan women such as they married at a much older age and had a wider choice of whom they wished to marry, whereas pagan women were forced into marriage before they even reached puberty. Studies have shown that pagans were three times more likely to be married before the age of thirteen, when nearly half of the female Christian population had not been wed before the age of eighteen.
After the first five centuries Christianity became the dominant faith of the empire. The very favorable sex ratio enjoyed by Christian women was soon translated into substantially more status and power within both the church and the family then pagan women had. However pagan women sometimes held important roles within various mystery cults and shrines. Daily life revolved around the church, and power resided in church offices. To the extent that women held significant roles within the church, they enjoyed greater power and status than pagan women did. .
There was a very substantial oversupply of marriageable Christian women and that this was acknowledged to be a problem. Many upper-class women faced a problem, which was to marry men who were of inferior rank. If they entered into a legal marriage with them, highborn women would lose many of their legal privileges and control of their wealth. It was noted that many mixed marriages were reported and that in almost all cases the husband was a pagan and the wife was a Christian.
