 Marinella demonstrated extraordinary scholarship by the standards of her day, particularly with respect to the variety of sources she was able to cite, and with greater accuracy than many of her contemporaries. Many defenders of women had contented themselves with responding to vaguely defined opponents; Marinella, by contrast, cited her authors and their texts with some precision. This indicates both that she had access to the texts themselves, and not only to reports on the texts, and also that she understood the scholarly force of accurately and precisely representing the claims of an author. This is one aspect of her methodology that serves as a strength, and singles her out from the crowd of pro-woman writers (see Ross 2009, 289). Her extensive use of citation served not only to exhibit those claims with which she was to take issue, but also to allow her to interpret for her own purposes the claims of authors with whom she disagreed. She often cites the same author both as an authority in support of her arguments, and as a target against whom she argues—and the effect of this is to undermine the authority of that source.