Soccus mimo placet.

Because Latin uses placēre differently from English to like.

The pattern is:

• the thing that is pleasing = nominative subject
• the person pleased = dative
• verb = placet or another form of placēre

So in Soccus mimo placet:

• soccus = the thing that pleases
• mimo = the person to whom it is pleasing

A very literal way to think of it is:

• The slipper is pleasing to the mime

That is why mimo is not the subject.

Mimo is dative singular.

It comes from the noun mimus, meaning mime or mime actor. In the second declension, the dative singular ending is often -ō, so:

• nominative singular: mimus
• dative singular: mimō

Here it is dative because placēre normally takes the person pleased in the dative.

Soccus is nominative singular, which is the normal case for the subject.

Also, the verb is placet, which is third person singular, so it matches a singular subject:

• soccus = singular
• placet = singular

So soccus is the grammatical subject of the sentence.

Placet is from placēre, meaning to please.

So placet means:

• pleases
• or more literally, is pleasing

In this sentence, it does not mean likes. English often translates the whole idea with like, but Latin structures it as X pleases Y.

Placet is:

• present tense
• active voice
• indicative mood
• third person singular

It comes from placeō, placēre.

So it means he/she/it pleases or is pleasing. Here the it is soccus.

No. Latin has no articles like English the or a/an.

So soccus can mean:

• a slipper
• the slipper

and mimo can mean:

• to a mime
• to the mime

The exact choice in English depends on context.

Yes. Latin word order is much freer than English word order because the endings show each word’s role.

So these could all mean basically the same thing:

• Soccus mimo placet
• Mimo soccus placet
• Placet mimo soccus

The endings still show that:

• soccus is the subject
• mimo is dative

That said, word order can affect emphasis. Putting a word first or last can make it stand out more.

The form mimo could look like either dative singular or ablative singular of mimus, since second-declension nouns often use -ō for both.

But in this sentence, the verb placet strongly points to the dative use, because the standard construction is:

• something
  • dative of person
    • placet

So here mimo is understood as dative, not ablative.

Both are second-declension masculine nouns.

Their nominative singular ends in -us:

• soccus
• mimus

Some useful forms:

For soccus:

• nominative singular: soccus
• genitive singular: soccī
• dative singular: soccō

For mimus:

• nominative singular: mimus
• genitive singular: mimī
• dative singular: mimō

That helps explain why the sentence uses soccus for the subject and mimo for the person affected.

Then both the subject and the verb would become plural:

• Socci mimo placent

Here:

• socci = nominative plural, slippers
• placent = they please

So the verb agrees with the thing doing the pleasing, not with the person in the dative.

Yes. A soccus is not just any footwear in every context. It often refers to a kind of slipper or light shoe, and in literary/cultural contexts it can be associated with comedy or the comic stage.

A learner does not always need that cultural nuance for basic grammar, but it can help explain why the word appears in literary Latin.