Cerarius ceram emit, quippe qui eam vendat.

A very literal breakdown is:

• Cerarius = a wax-seller / wax-dealer / chandler
• ceram = wax (direct object)
• emit = buys
• quippe qui = since he... / seeing that he... / as one who...
• eam = it (referring back to ceram)
• vendat = sells

So a natural translation would be something like:

The wax-dealer buys wax, since he sells it.

Or, a bit more literally:

The wax-dealer buys wax, as one who sells it.

Because cerarius is in the nominative singular, which is the normal case for the subject of a Latin sentence.

Here:

• cerarius = nominative singular masculine
• ceram = accusative singular
• emit = he/she/it buys

So cerarius is the one doing the buying.

Because it is the direct object of emit.

The verb emo, emere means to buy, and the thing bought is put in the accusative. So:

• ceram emit = he buys wax

This is just like many Latin verbs that take a direct object in the accusative.

Eam is also accusative singular feminine.

It refers back to ceram, which is:

• feminine
• singular
• accusative in its own clause

So eam means it, specifically that wax.

Latin often uses a pronoun instead of repeating the noun, just as English does:

• He buys wax, since he sells it

instead of

• He buys wax, since he sells wax

Because it refers to cera (wax), and cera is a feminine noun in Latin.

Pronouns must agree with the noun they refer to in gender and number. So since cera is feminine singular, the pronoun is feminine singular too:

• cera → eam

Quippe qui is an idiomatic Latin expression that introduces a clause giving a reason or an explanation about the person mentioned.

In this sentence, it means something like:

• since he
• seeing that he
• inasmuch as he
• as one who

So:

• Cerarius ceram emit, quippe qui eam vendat = The wax-dealer buys wax, since he sells it

The phrase often has a slightly explanatory tone: it gives the reason why the statement in the main clause makes sense.

Because qui is the nominative singular masculine form, and it refers back to cerarius.

Inside the clause qui eam vendat, the pronoun qui is the subject of vendat:

• qui vendat = who sells

It must therefore be nominative.

It is masculine singular because its antecedent, cerarius, is masculine singular.

This is one of the most important features of the sentence.

After quippe qui, Latin commonly uses the subjunctive, not the indicative. So vendat is a present subjunctive form.

This subjunctive does not mean doubt here. Instead, it marks the clause as a characterizing or explanatory relative clause. In other words, Latin is not simply saying who sells it as a plain fact in the most neutral way; it is presenting that clause as the reason or characteristic that explains the main statement.

So:

• vendit would be a straightforward indicative: he sells
• vendat after quippe qui is the normal grammatical construction

It is closely related.

The clause qui eam vendat uses a relative pronoun + subjunctive, which is the pattern often seen in a relative clause of characteristic. But with quippe, the clause is especially causal/explanatory: it gives the reason why the wax-dealer buys wax.

So it has the flavor of:

• as one who sells it
• since he sells it

You can think of it as a relative clause with the subjunctive used in an explanatory, characterizing way.

Because the two clauses do different jobs.

• emit is the main statement: the wax-dealer buys wax
• vendat is inside the explanatory quippe qui clause

Latin often keeps the main statement in the indicative, while a subordinate clause introduced by a special expression like quippe qui takes the subjunctive.

So the sentence structure is:

• main fact: Cerarius ceram emit
• explanation: quippe qui eam vendat

• emit is present indicative active, third person singular: he buys
• vendat is present subjunctive active, third person singular: he may sell / would sell in form, but here simply sells in sense

Even though both are present forms, the difference is mainly mood, not time:

• emit = indicative
• vendat = subjunctive

No. Emit is present tense: he buys.

The perfect tense of emo would be emit? Actually, no: the perfect is emit only in spelling? This is a place where learners can get confused.

The verb emo has:

• present: emit = he buys
• perfect: emit can also appear in some contexts as he bought, because the perfect of emo is indeed emit

So the written form emit can be ambiguous by itself.

However, in this sentence, learners usually understand it as present, especially because the whole statement is general in meaning: The wax-dealer buys wax, since he sells it.

So yes, the form emit can in theory be either present or perfect, but here the context strongly favors present.

Because Latin, like English, often prefers a pronoun when the reference is already clear.

Compare:

• He buys wax because he sells it
• not usually He buys wax because he sells wax

Using eam makes the sentence smoother and avoids repetition.

The word order is meaningful, but Latin is more flexible than English.

The basic structure is:

• Cerarius = subject
• ceram emit = main clause
• quippe qui eam vendat = explanatory clause

Latin could rearrange some parts without changing the core meaning, because the grammatical endings show the roles of the words. Still, this order is natural and clear.

English depends heavily on word order; Latin depends more on inflection.

The antecedent of qui is cerarius.

So:

• cerarius ... qui ... vendat = the wax-dealer ... who sells ...

The relative pronoun agrees with its antecedent in gender and number, but its case depends on its own role in the relative clause. Here it is nominative because it is the subject of vendat.

A cerarius is a person connected with cera (wax), usually a wax-dealer, wax-worker, or chandler depending on context.

In this sentence, the sense is clearly someone who deals in wax commercially, since he both buys and sells it.

Not really, at least not in good English.

Although vendat is subjunctive, the clause here is not mainly about would in the English conditional sense. It is better translated in a way that captures the function of the Latin:

• since he sells it
• seeing that he sells it
• as one who sells it

A too-literal who would sell it would sound misleading in English.

A useful pattern to remember is:

main clause + quippe qui + subjunctive

This often means:

• ... since he...
• ... seeing that he...
• ... as one who...

So from this sentence you can learn:

• ceram is accusative because it is the object of emit
• eam refers back to ceram
• qui refers back to cerarius
• quippe qui commonly takes the subjunctive
• the clause after quippe qui gives a reason/explanation