Which Classical Library Is Right for You?

Noet is here! You can download the free mobile app right now, and for just a few more weeks, you can save on a selection of libraries spanning the classics, philosophy, ancient languages, and literature.

You’re interested in intellectual history and ancient context. You’re ready to start using Logos-powered study tools to learn more, faster. So, which Noet library is for you?

Let’s take a closer look at four standouts:

1. For the ambitious learner: the Harvard Classics Collection

Charles William Eliot, the former Harvard president, selected the Harvard Classics’ 51 volumes to show that a five-foot shelf of books could prove “a good substitute for a liberal education.” Now Eliot’s famous five-foot shelf fits on your mobile device. You’ll get some of the best volumes across a wide variety of disciplines:

• Poetry: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Milton’s complete poems, an overview of English-language poetry from Chaucer to Whitman, and more
• Philosophy: Plato’s Phaedo and Apology, Berkeley’s Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonious, Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, and more
• Parable and allegory: Aesop’s Letters and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
• Drama: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest
• Economics: Adam Smith’s vastly influential Wealth of Nations
• Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and medicine: writings by Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Newcomb, Hippocrates, Pasteur, and others

The  Harvard Fiction Collection, also available in Noet, builds on Eliot’s classical curriculum with works from Fielding, Dickens, Poe, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and others.

Start learning from some of the West’s greatest works: see everything you’ll get with the Harvard Classics Collection.

2. For the philosopher and classicist: the Ancient Philosophy Bundle

“Every man,” said Coleridge, “is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. . . . They are two classes of man, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third.” Adds Borges, “Across the latitudes and the epochs, the two immortal antagonists change their name and language: one is Parmenides, Spinoza, Kant, Francis Bradley; the other, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, William James.” All through Western intellectual history run the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, as well as those of Plato’s famous teacher, Socrates; they are the context you need to study philosophy and the ancient world.

Noet’s Ancient Philosophy Bundle gives you Plato’s dialogues across five volumes, including the Phaedo—“There is nothing [like Socrates’ death in the Phaedo] in any tragedy, ancient or modern,” wrote the Rev. Benjamin Jowett—as well as the Republic (that famous discourse on justice and order), the Timaeus (which introduces the demiurge, or creator god, that the Gnostics found so fascinating), and many more. You’ll also get Aristotle’s vastly influential writings on logic, language, ethics, and rhetoric: On Interpretation, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric, and many more volumes.

Study the foundations of Western philosophy: see everything you’ll get with the Ancient Philosophy Bundle.

3. For the NT scholar: the Biblical Greek Bundle

Noet’s Biblical Greek Bundle sets you up with resources to master the Greek of the New Testament. For one thing, you’ll get the authoritative critical text: Nestle-Aland’s Greek New Testament, 27th ed., the basis for almost every Bible translation carried out in the last hundred years. You’ll also get:

• The famously comprehensive Liddell and Scott Greek–English Lexicon
• Two very accessible Greek grammars: David and Shackelford’s Beginner’s Grammar of the Greek NT and A. T. Roberston’s Short Grammar of the Greek NT
• Lexical context that helps you learn: Stanley Porter’s Idioms of the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., as well as the New Revised Standard Version.

All told, you’re getting an introduction to modern linguistics and Greek pronunciation, a highly regarded morphological concordance, lexical data for detailed analysis, and diverse contextual materials that set you up for wider understanding.

Study the NT in its original Greek: learn more about the Biblical Greek Bundle.

4. For the professor: the Classical Foundations Bundle

Noet’s biggest library by far is the Classical Foundations Bundle. It gives you everything from the discipline-specific bundles, plus presentation media (quote slides and timelines) to save you lesson-prep time.

• From the Ancient Philosophy Bundle, you get the works of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
• From the Modern Philosophy Bundle, you get the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, and others.
• From the two Harvard bundles, you get Dante, Milton, Dostoyevsky, Augustine, and far more.
• From the ancient-language bundles, you get the best resources for mastering Greek and Latin.
• What’s more, you get the 1,114-volume Perseus Classics Collection, which sets you up with key primary sources in both English translation and the original languages.

That’s a vast library: if these were print editions, you’d probably want a professional librarian to help you find, sequestered in some distant shelf, exactly what you’re looking for. With Noet, though, you can run powerful, precise searches across your entire library. When you find that rare primary source, you can set it to scroll together with its commentary or translation. And when you want to draw out original-language nuance, you can see the Greek or Latin gloss and morphology with a tap.

The Classical Foundations Bundle gives you the backbone of a good university library, and Noet’s smart searches and study features give you the world’s fastest research assistant.

Do better research with Noet’s biggest library: see everything you’ll get with the Classical Foundations Bundle.