Questions & Answers about Civis iudicem adit.
In Latin, you usually tell that from the case endings, not just from word order.
- civis is the subject here
- iudicem is the object
- adit is the verb
So the citizen is the one doing the action, and the judge is the person being approached.
A native English speaker often expects word order alone to show this, but Latin relies much more on endings.
Here civis is nominative singular, which is the case normally used for the subject of a sentence.
One small point: civis can also be genitive singular in other contexts, because some third-declension nouns have the same form for nominative and genitive singular. But in this sentence, it must be nominative, because it is the subject of adit.
Because it is accusative singular.
The accusative is commonly used for the direct object of a verb. Here, the judge is the person whom the citizen approaches, so iudex changes to iudicem.
This is a third-declension noun:
- nominative singular: iudex
- genitive singular: iudicis
- accusative singular: iudicem
So the -em ending is a strong clue that this noun is the object.