Nonne favus melliginem continuit?

Nonne introduces a question that expects the answer yes.

So this is not a neutral yes/no question. It has the sense of:

• Surely ... ?
• Didn’t ... ?
• Isn’t it true that ... ?

A plain question could use -ne instead, but nonne suggests that the speaker assumes the statement is true and is asking for confirmation.

Because continuit is the 3rd person singular perfect active indicative of contineo, continere.

That means it means he/she/it contained or has contained, depending on context. In most simple narrative contexts, English will usually translate it as a simple past:

• it contained

Here the subject is favus, so continuit means the honeycomb contained.

The subject is favus.

You can tell because:

• favus is in the nominative singular
• continuit is 3rd person singular
• so favus is the noun that matches the verb as the doer of the action

In other words:

• favus = the thing doing the containing
• melliginem = the thing being contained

Melliginem is in the accusative singular because it is the direct object of continuit.

The verb contineo takes a direct object: someone or something contains something. So Latin puts the thing contained into the accusative case.

So the structure is:

• favus = nominative subject
• melliginem = accusative object
• continuit = verb

Because Classical Latin has no articles.

Latin does not have separate words for:

• the
• a / an

So favus could mean:

• a honeycomb
• the honeycomb

and the exact English wording depends on context.

The same is true for melliginem.

The word order is natural, but not as rigid as in English.

Here we have roughly:

• Nonne = question word/particle
• favus = subject
• melliginem = object
• continuit = verb

This is a very normal Latin order, especially with the verb at the end.

Because Latin uses case endings, it does not rely on word order as heavily as English does. So the roles of favus and melliginem are shown mainly by their endings, not by position.

Because Latin very often places the finite verb near or at the end of the clause.

That is one of the most common sentence patterns in Latin, although not the only one. So ... melliginem continuit feels very normal in Latin prose.

English usually prefers subject–verb–object order, but Latin often prefers subject–object–verb.

Not exactly.

Latin has several common ways to ask yes/no questions:

• -ne = neutral question
• nonne = question expecting yes
• num = question expecting no

So:

• Continuitne favus melliginem? = Did the honeycomb contain honey?
  (neutral)
• Nonne favus melliginem continuit? = Didn’t the honeycomb contain honey?
  (expecting yes)
• Num favus melliginem continuit? = Surely the honeycomb didn’t contain honey?
  (expecting no)

That is the key difference.

It comes from:

• contineo
• continere
• continui
• contentum

This is a 2nd-conjugation verb in -eo, but its perfect stem is continui-, which gives continuit.

So:

• present: continet = it contains
• perfect: continuit = it contained / has contained

Yes, potentially.

Its basic meaning is honeycomb, but like many Latin nouns, the exact sense depends on context. It can refer to a honeycomb structure or a comb full of honey. In this sentence, though, it is simply the subject noun, and the grammar works the same either way.

For a learner, the important grammatical point is that favus is a 2nd-declension masculine nominative singular form here.

A simple way to break it down is:

• Nonne = introduces a yes-expected question
• favus = subject
• melliginem = direct object
• continuit = perfect-tense verb

So grammatically it is:

Question particle + subject + object + verb

That is a very common and useful Latin pattern to recognize.