Mercator negat se pretium nimium petere.

This sentence uses a very common Latin pattern called the accusative-and-infinitive construction for indirect statement.

• Mercator negat = The merchant denies
• se ... petere = the reported statement, literally himself to be asking
• pretium nimium = too high a price / an excessive price

So the structure is:

• main verb: negat
• subject of the indirect statement: se
• infinitive of the indirect statement: petere

A very literal English version would be The merchant denies himself to be asking too high a price, but natural English says The merchant denies that he is asking too high a price.

Because after verbs like say, think, know, hear, and deny, Latin often puts the reported statement into an infinitive clause.

So instead of using a finite verb with that, Latin says:

• negat se pretium nimium petere

rather than something like negat quod...

Also, the present infinitive petere shows action happening at the same time as negat. So the sense is:

• he denies that he is asking
• not he denied that he had asked
• not he denies that he will ask

Se is the reflexive pronoun. It refers back to the subject of the main verb, which is mercator.

So:

• Mercator negat se... petere
• = The merchant denies that he himself is asking...

Latin uses se because the person doing the denying and the person doing the asking are the same person.

If it referred to someone else, Latin would use another pronoun, such as eum:

• Mercator negat eum pretium nimium petere
• The merchant denies that he / that man is asking too high a price

So se is a key clue that the subject of the infinitive is the same as mercator.

Se is accusative.

In the accusative-and-infinitive construction, the subject of the infinitive goes into the accusative case. That is why se is accusative here, even though in English we would think of it as the subject of is asking.

So in this sentence:

• se = subject of petere
• but because it is inside an indirect statement, it appears in the accusative

This is one of the most important things to get used to in Latin.

Because Latin usually does not use a word meaning that to introduce this kind of indirect statement.

English says:

• The merchant denies that he is asking too high a price

Latin instead uses:

• negat se ... petere

So the idea of English that is expressed by the construction itself, not by a separate word.

That is normal Latin.

Because the negation is already built into negat, which means denies or literally says no.

So Latin does not need an extra non here to make the sentence negative. The main verb itself carries the negative force:

• negat = he denies

The sentence does not mean The merchant says that he is not asking too high a price by using a separate negative inside the indirect statement. Rather, it means The merchant denies that he is asking too high a price.

That distinction matters.

Pretium is accusative singular neuter.

It is the direct object of petere.

Here petere means to ask for, to seek, or to demand, so the thing being asked for is put in the accusative:

• pretium petere = to ask a price / to demand a price

In smoother English, we usually say to ask too high a price or to ask too much.

Here nimium is best understood as an adjective agreeing with pretium.

• pretium is neuter singular accusative
• nimium is also neuter singular accusative

So:

• pretium nimium = an excessive price / too high a price

By contrast, nimis is an adverb meaning too much or too.

A learner might expect something like pretium nimis, but Latin often expresses this idea by making nimium agree with the noun. So the phrase is not really price too much, but rather too-great price.

Petere has a wide range of meanings in Latin, depending on context. It can mean things like:

• seek
• aim at
• go toward
• ask for
• demand
• sometimes even attack

Here, with pretium, it means ask for or demand a price.

So:

• pretium petere = to ask a price
• in natural English: to ask too high a price, to charge too much

This is a good reminder that many common Latin verbs are broader in meaning than any single English verb.

Yes. Latin word order is much freer than English word order because the grammatical endings show how the words fit together.

In this sentence:

• Mercator is clearly the subject of negat
• se is clearly the accusative subject of the infinitive
• pretium is the object of petere
• nimium goes with pretium
• petere comes at the end, which is very common in Latin

So the order helps readability and emphasis, but the endings do most of the grammatical work.

A Latin writer could rearrange the sentence in other ways without changing the basic meaning, though some orders would sound more natural than others.

A rough direct version would be:

• Pretium nimium non peto = I am not asking too high a price

Then, when reported indirectly after negat, it becomes:

• Mercator negat se pretium nimium petere

Notice the changes:

• first-person peto becomes infinitive petere
• the speaker I becomes se, referring back to mercator
• the negative idea is now carried by negat rather than by a separate non in the reported clause

That is a very useful way to understand how Latin indirect statement works.