Praediator et sector prope hastam publicam sunt.

Because the subject has two nouns joined by et:

• praediator
• sector

Together they make a plural subject, so Latin uses the 3rd-person plural verb sunt = are.

If there were only one subject, you would expect est instead.

They are in the nominative singular.

That is the normal case for the subject of the sentence. Each word names one person, and together they form the compound subject.

Both are masculine nouns of the third declension:

• praediator, praediatoris
• sector, sectoris

Yes. Here prope is a preposition meaning near or close to.

As a preposition, prope takes the accusative case. That is why the next phrase is hastam publicam, not hasta publica.

That is a very common question.

Latin does often use other constructions for place, but prepositions each govern their own case. Prope specifically takes the accusative.

So:

• hasta publica = nominative
• hastam publicam = accusative, used after prope

The accusative here does not mean direct object in the English sense; it is simply the case required by the preposition prope.

Because the adjective must agree with hastam.

Hastam is:

• accusative
• singular
• feminine

So the adjective must also be:

• accusative
• singular
• feminine

That gives publicam.

This is normal Latin adjective agreement.

Because Latin word order is much freer than English word order.

An adjective can come:

• before the noun
• after the noun
• sometimes separated from it

So both publicam hastam and hastam publicam are possible in principle. Here the adjective simply follows the noun.

The important thing is not position, but agreement:

• hastam matches publicam in case, number, and gender.

Literally, hasta publica means public spear.

In Roman culture, a spear could be set up as a sign of a public auction, especially a state sale. So the phrase can refer not just to a literal spear, but to the auction itself or the place marked for the sale.

That is why this expression may feel strange if translated word-for-word. It is a Roman cultural idiom.

Because Latin often places the verb late in the sentence, very often at the end.

English usually prefers:

• subject + verb + other elements

Latin is more flexible. So this sentence can naturally be arranged as:

• subject: Praediator et sector
• prepositional phrase: prope hastam publicam
• verb: sunt

Putting the verb last is completely normal Latin style.

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

So a Latin noun by itself may be understood in English as:

• the bidder
• a bidder
• sometimes just bidder

You decide from context which English wording sounds right. The Latin sentence does not explicitly mark that difference.

No. Even though it looks similar to an English speaker, praediator here does not mean predator in the modern English sense.

In this sentence it refers to a person connected with buying or dealing at auction. So it is a specific Roman noun, not the same as the English word predator.

This is a good example of why look-alikes should be checked carefully in Latin.

No. Here sector is a person, not an abstract sector in the modern English sense.

It is a masculine third-declension noun:

• nominative singular sector
• genitive singular sectoris

In Roman usage it can refer to someone who pursues or, in certain contexts, someone involved in buying property or goods. So in this sentence it is another noun naming a person.

Yes:

• Praediator — nominative singular masculine noun; part of the subject
• et — and
• sector — nominative singular masculine noun; second part of the subject
• prope — preposition meaning near, taking the accusative
• hastam — accusative singular feminine of hasta
• publicam — accusative singular feminine of publicus, -a, -um, agreeing with hastam
• sunt — 3rd-person plural present of esse, are

So the structure is:

[subject] + [prepositional phrase] + [verb]