Serva bona dominae servit, sed domina iusta honorem quoque servae dat.

Because serva bona is in the nominative singular, which is the case normally used for the subject.

• serva = nominative singular, slave woman
• bona = nominative singular feminine, agreeing with serva, so good

So serva bona means the good slave woman and is the one doing the action.

The verb servit is third person singular, so it matches a singular subject: she serves.

By contrast, dominae is not nominative here, so it is not the subject.

Because the verb servit comes from servire, and servire takes the dative case for the person served.

So:

• serva bona dominae servit = the good slave serves the mistress

Even though dominae could also be genitive singular in another context, here the verb tells you what to expect. After servire, the person being served is normally dative.

That is a very common thing for English speakers to notice, because in English we do not say serve to someone, but Latin grammar treats it that way.

The endings tell you the job of each word:

• domina iusta = nominative singular → the subject, the just mistress
• honorem = accusative singular → the direct object, honor
• servae = dative singular → the indirect object, to the slave woman
• dat = she gives

So the structure is:

the just mistress gives honor also to the slave woman

or more naturally in English:

but the just mistress also gives honor to the slave

Because it is the direct object of dat.

The verb dare means to give, and the thing given goes into the accusative case:

• honor = nominative, honor as a subject
• honorem = accusative, honor as a direct object

So:

• honor dat would be wrong here
• honorem dat is correct = gives honor

Because Latin adjectives must agree with the nouns they describe in:

• gender
• number
• case

So:

• serva bona: both are feminine singular nominative
• domina iusta: both are feminine singular nominative

This is why the adjective endings match the noun endings here.

English speakers often expect adjectives to stay unchanged, because English says good slave and just mistress without changing good or just. Latin does change them.

Servit is the verb serves. It is:

• third person singular
• present tense
• from servire = to serve

It is related in meaning to serva (slave woman), but it is a verb, not a noun.

A useful warning: servit is not the same as servat.

• servit = serves / is a slave to
• servat = saves, preserves, or keeps

Those forms are easy to confuse at first.

Dat is the verb gives. It is:

• third person singular
• present tense
• from dare = to give

Its pattern here is:

someone gives something to someone

So in this sentence:

• domina iusta = the one giving
• honorem = what is given
• servae = the person receiving it

Because quoque often comes after the word it emphasizes.

So honorem quoque most naturally means:

• honor too
• honor also
• also honor

It suggests that the mistress gives honor as well, perhaps in addition to something else already understood.

English usually puts also before the word or later in the clause, but Latin often places quoque after the emphasized word.

Because they are both first-declension feminine nouns, and -ae is a very common ending in the first declension.

For first-declension nouns, -ae can represent several different forms, including:

• genitive singular
• dative singular
• nominative plural

So how do you know which one it is?
You use context and syntax.

Here:

• dominae after servit is best understood as dative singular
• servae after dat is also dative singular

This is normal in Latin: one ending can have more than one possible meaning, and the sentence tells you which one fits.

Latin word order is more flexible than English word order, because the endings already show each word’s role.

So this sentence could be rearranged in other ways and still mean basically the same thing, as long as the endings stay the same.

For example, Latin can move words around for:

• emphasis
• contrast
• style
• rhythm

That said, the order here is very readable:

• serva bona together
• domina iusta together
• verbs toward the end of each clause

So even though Latin is flexible, the sentence is not random. The author has grouped related words clearly.

Because Classical Latin does not have articles like English the or a/an.

So:

• serva can mean a slave woman or the slave woman
• domina can mean a mistress or the mistress

You decide from context which English article sounds best.

That is why a Latin sentence often looks shorter than its English translation.