Retiarius rete, fuscinam, et galerum portat.

Because retiarius is in the nominative singular, which is the case typically used for the subject in Latin.

So in:

Retiarius rete, fuscinam, et galerum portat.

the basic structure is:

• retiarius = the gladiator with the net = subject
• portat = carries = verb
• rete, fuscinam, et galerum = the things being carried = direct objects

A native English speaker may want to read the sentence from left to right and assume position alone tells you the job of each word, but in Latin the word ending matters more than the position.

Because they belong to different kinds of nouns, so their accusative singular forms look different.

Here they are:

• rete — accusative singular of a neuter third-declension noun
• fuscinam — accusative singular of a first-declension noun
• galerum — accusative singular of a second-declension masculine noun

All three are objects of portat, but Latin does not use one single object ending for every noun. The ending depends on the noun’s declension and sometimes its gender.

This happens because rete is a neuter noun.

A very important Latin rule is:

• for neuter nouns, the nominative and accusative are always the same
• this is true in both singular and plural

So:

• nominative singular: rete
• accusative singular: rete

That is completely normal. Even though it is a direct object here, its form does not change.

Portat is:

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

The -t ending tells you the subject is he/she/it.

So portat means:

• he carries
• she carries
• it carries

In this sentence, the subject is retiarius, so the meaning is the retiarius carries.

Because that is a very common Latin word order.

Latin often puts the verb last:

• Retiarius rete, fuscinam, et galerum portat.

That said, Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order because case endings do so much of the grammatical work.

So Latin could rearrange the sentence in other ways and still mean the same thing, for example:

• Rete, fuscinam, et galerum retiarius portat.
• Portat retiarius rete, fuscinam, et galerum.

The version with the verb at the end is simply a very normal, straightforward Latin style.

Because Latin does not have articles like English.

English says:

• a net
• the net

Latin usually just says:

• rete

The listener or reader understands from context whether the meaning is more like a, an, the, or sometimes no article at all in English.

So rete can mean:

• a net
• the net

depending on the situation.

That is a normal way to list things in Latin.

In this sentence:

• rete, fuscinam, et galerum

Latin is using the equivalent of English net, trident, and galerus.

This pattern is very common:

• item 1, item 2, et item 3

Latin can also repeat et more often for emphasis, but it does not need to.

Yes. They are closely related words.

• rete = net
• retiarius = literally something like net-man or net-fighter

The ending -arius often forms a noun connected with something. So retiarius is the gladiator associated with the net.

That is a helpful vocabulary clue: if you know rete, you can more easily remember what a retiarius is.

Yes. The commas are a modern editorial choice to make the list easier to read.

Ancient Latin manuscripts usually had much less punctuation than modern printed texts. So you may see:

• Retiarius rete fuscinam et galerum portat

or with commas:

• Retiarius rete, fuscinam, et galerum portat.

Both represent the same Latin sentence.

A rough Classical pronunciation would be:

reh-tee-AH-ree-oos REH-teh, foos-kee-NAHM, et gah-LEH-room POR-taht

A few helpful points:

• r is trilled or tapped
• ti in retiarius is usually pronounced as written, not like English sh
• c is always hard, so fuscinam has a k sound
• g is always hard, so galerum begins with g as in get
• a, e, i, o, u are pure vowel sounds, not English-style diphthongs

Yes. Since all three nouns are clearly objects, Latin can change their order without changing the basic meaning.

For example, these would still make sense:

• Retiarius galerum, rete, et fuscinam portat.
• Retiarius fuscinam et rete et galerum portat.

The exact order can affect emphasis or style, but the endings still show that they are all objects of portat.