Collegium Fraudis1   
     
O socii fraudis, mihi saepene2 dicitis, "heu cur
Non loqueris, perdocte, Latina voce, magister?"
Certe nunc canam amoenum hymnum mendacium ovantum3.   

                 Liars' Club

Oh comrades fond of lying, often you
Have said to me, "Why don't you say something
In Latin, since you taught it years not few?"
Well, now I'll sing a hymn glad for lying.

     
Heia colentes Mercurium4 veneremur amicum
Furum et falsidicorum, at laudemus vafrum Ulixem5
Cretemque illum6 qui dicit omnes falsiloquentes
Cretes esse atque Herodotum7 atque sagacem
Lucium8 Amatores Fraudis facientem hodiernos.

Hey, let us worship Mercury, the friend 
Of thieves and liars, then let's praise the deft
Ulysses and that Cretan who'll contend
All Cretans liars be, and more are left:
Herodotus and Lucian's Love of Lies.

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1. The poem is in dactylic hexameter, the heroic verse of antiquity: 
   six feet of long-short-short syllables: -uu -uu -uu -uu -uu -^, 
   with the possible substitution of a spondee (two long syllables) in 
   any but the fifth foot. This is the metre of all the great epic 
   poems of antiquity: The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Theogony, the Works 
   and Days, the Argonautica in Greek, Lucretius' Rerum Natura, the 
   Aeneid, the Metamorphoses, the Civil War, and so on in Latin. 
   Note that poetic translations can not be exact or literal; the best 
   they can do is to give a general sense of the original.

2. The -ne enclitic is not placed on the first word by poetic license; 
   moreover, the question is somewhat of an aside affecting just 
   'saepe'.

3. Another poetic license that allows the participle to have a regular 
   genitive plural ending instead of that of an i-stem.    

4. Classical hymns celebrate a god,- in this case Hermes (in Latin 
   Mercury) who is the patron god of liars, thieves, merchants, 
   travelers (both terrestrial and psychic), and such.

5. Ulixes is a Latin variant for Ulysses who is Odysseus to the 
   Greeks, who considered his superhuman shrewdness and ability to 
   prevaricate heroic. He is the greatest liars among the heroes.

6. The famous Cretan was Epimenides. His saying is the basis of one of 
   the great logical puzzles of all times: the Liar paradox.

7. As the 'father of history' Herodotus bears the brunt of history's 
   continual bias,- it is always written by the winners. Moreover, 
   Herodotus told the stories of some of antiquity's greatest liars, 
   as for instance Themistocles who more than any other single person 
   was responsible for the Greek victory over the Persians. He was 
   not only heroic, but a consummate scoundrel and traitor,- later.
   
8. Lucius was a name that Lucian of Samosata used; he wrote in the 2cd
   century AD.  His humorous dialogues (including the one mentioned 
   here: The Lovers of Lying) exposed many liars, frauds, and    
   equivocators in all walks of life.