  The proems are the most original poetic compositions in the DRN, and one may suspect that the book 5 proem’s brand of Euhemerizing theology goes beyond traditional Epicureanism. The same suspicion recurs with even greater force when we focus on the proem to book 1. In it Lucretius prays to Venus, not only as the universal life force but also as ancestress of the Romans, begging her to intervene with her lover Mars and save the troubled Roman republic from civil strife. Although this choice of motif may owe much to Lucretius’ forerunner and model Empedocles, for whom Love or Aphrodite is the great creative force in the cosmos, it borders perilously on a betrayal of the poem’s central motif, that we should not fear the gods because they do not, and never would, intervene in our world. Readers, as they progress further into the poem, are no doubt expected to accumulate the appropriate materials for understanding the proem as in tune with the true Epicurean message, but there is little agreement as to how this is meant to be achieved. One possibility is as follows. The warlike Mars is not, as such, a true Epicurean god, but a popular perversion of the true divine nature, resulting from people’s projection of their own angry and competitive temperament onto this ideal being. If so, the prayer for Venus to pacify Mars is no more than the expressed hope that Romans will return to appreciating the true peaceful nature of divinity, which for an Epicurean like Lucretius is nothing different from their themselves striving to emulate this paradigm of peacefulness. The poem’s lesson will itself, if successfully taught to its Roman audience, be enough to answer its author’s opening prayer.