Civis tributum et vectigal solvit.

Here civis is nominative singular, so it is the subject: the citizen.

A learner may notice that civis can also be genitive singular in other contexts. That is true. But in this sentence, nominative makes sense because someone has to perform the action of solvit, and civis is the noun that fits that role.

So in this sentence:

• civis = subject
• solvit = verb
• tributum et vectigal = what the citizen pays

Because solvere can take a direct object: you pay something.

In this sentence, the things being paid are:

• tributum
• vectigal

That makes them direct objects, so they are in the accusative case.

More specifically:

• tributum is accusative singular
• vectigal is also accusative singular

Even though vectigal looks the same as its nominative form, its job in the sentence shows that it is an object here.

Because the verb agrees with the subject, not with the objects.

The subject is civis, which is singular: the citizen.

The sentence has two objects, tributum et vectigal, but that does not make the verb plural. A single citizen is paying two things, so the verb stays singular: solvit.

Both words can be translated as kinds of tax or public payment, but they are not exactly identical.

A rough distinction is:

• tributum = a tribute, levy, or direct tax
• vectigal = a tax, duty, toll, rent, or source of public revenue

So the sentence is using two related but distinct financial terms. In a beginner sentence, you can often understand them broadly as tax and duty/revenue-payment, but in real Latin texts the exact nuance can matter.

Yes. In ordinary spelling, solvit can represent either:

• present tense: he/she pays
• perfect tense: he/she paid or has paid

Latin often leaves that ambiguity unless the context makes it clear.

If macrons are written, they help distinguish them:

• solvit = present
• solvīt = perfect

So if your textbook translates it as present, that is probably because of the exercise context, not because the bare spelling alone absolutely forces that meaning.

Because Latin has no articles.

So civis can mean:

• a citizen
• the citizen
• sometimes a more general the citizen/citizen

Likewise, tributum and vectigal do not need separate words for a or the. Latin leaves that to context.

This is very normal in Latin, but it can feel strange to an English speaker at first because English usually requires an article.

It matters much less than in English.

Latin uses case endings to show what each word is doing, so the sentence can often be rearranged without changing the basic meaning. The order here is very common:

• subject: civis
• objects: tributum et vectigal
• verb: solvit

This subject–object–verb pattern is especially common in Latin prose.

Other orders are possible, such as:

• Tributum et vectigal civis solvit
• Civis solvit tributum et vectigal

These can sound slightly different in emphasis, but the core meaning stays the same.

Because it belongs to a different declension.

• tributum is a 2nd-declension neuter noun
• vectigal is a 3rd-declension neuter noun

Neuter nouns have an important pattern:

• nominative and accusative are always the same in form

So for vectigal, the nominative singular and accusative singular are both vectigal. You know it is accusative here because it is one of the things being paid.

Et is the basic Latin word for and. It links tributum and vectigal together.

So the structure is:

• tributum et vectigal = tax and duty/revenue-payment

It is simply joining two direct objects.

Yes. Latin has a few ways to join words.

The most common alternatives are:

• et = and
• enclitic -que attached to the second word, as in tributum vectigalque
• sometimes atque/ac in certain contexts

In this sentence, et is the simplest and most straightforward choice for a learner.

Not necessarily. Grammatically, civis can refer to a male or a female citizen, depending on context.

So by itself, civis is not automatically male citizen. If the sentence gives no further clue, English often uses a neutral translation such as citizen.

This is another place where Latin can be less explicit than English might be.