Lucretius and the Logic of Venus

Why did Lucretius begin his poem on physics and the philosophy of materialism with an invocation of the Goddess Venus? Is love a mere attraction, a kind of helpless gravity, or is there a holy logic to it, a divine sense to be made both in and beyond cosmic matter, a logic to not only feeling it, but to sustaining it, and meaning it?
These questions are what V. B. Price sets out to explore in his response to the Roman poet Lucretius's classic On the Nature of Things. The result is timeless while reaching across time, a philosophical and heartfelt call for pleasure in a world too often reluctant to embrace it.