Picture This by Joseph Heller

I recently finished reading this. Here's the comment I posted at Library Thing.
"The subject of Picture This is a painting by Rembrandt. The painting is Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer which becomes a nexus that joins a large number of narrative threads that wind thru history. Some of the main threads are the lives of Socrates, Alcibiades, Plato, Solon, Aristotle and Rembrandt; the Athenian and Dutch empires; the Peloponnesian War and some of the wars fought by the Dutch during Rembrandt’s life; the dictatorship of the Thirty that executed Socrates; Plato’s repeated attempts to found his perfect state in Sicily; the trial and death of Socrates."