 Although Lipsius made a thorough study of all the ancient Stoic sources available to readers of his time, the Manuductio was not a mere anthology of quotations. Using his well-honed skills as a classical scholar, he meticulously analyzed the philological, historical and philosophical aspects of Greek and Roman Stoic writings, relying primarily on Seneca and Epictetus, but also taking into account Cicero, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius and a host of other ancient writers, including Plato, Philo Judaeus, Apuleius, (pseudo-)Hermes Trismegistus and Sextus Empiricus. We also find quotations from Scriptures and from a variety of Greek and Latin Church Fathers — Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Lactantius, Eusebius and St Augustine —together with later Christian writers such as Orosius and Isidore of Seville. Lipsius drew on these thinkers not only because of the historical or philosophical information which they provided on Stoic philosophers and their doctrines but also to demonstrate the uninterrupted interest in Stoic philosophy of later centuries.