Puer, veritatem dicere conatus, tandem matri fatetur se nummos cepisse.

the boy

Breakdown of Puer, veritatem dicere conatus, tandem matri fatetur se nummos cepisse.

• mater: to the mother
• dicere: to tell
• veritas: the truth

Questions & Answers about Puer, veritatem dicere conatus, tandem matri fatetur se nummos cepisse.

What is the main verb of the sentence, and how is the sentence put together?

The main finite verb is fatetur = he admits / confesses.

A helpful way to divide the sentence is:

• Puer — the subject, the boy
• veritatem dicere conatus — a participial phrase describing the boy, having tried to tell the truth
• tandem matri fatetur — finally admits to his mother
• se nummos cepisse — what he admits, that he took the coins

So the core structure is:

Puer ... fatetur ... se nummos cepisse.

Everything else adds detail.

Why is conatus used here instead of conatur or conatus est?

Conatus is a participle, not the main verb here.

It comes from the deponent verb conor, conari, conatus sum, meaning to try.
Here conatus agrees with puer and means something like:

• having tried
• after trying

So puer, veritatem dicere conatus means the boy, having tried to tell the truth.

If the sentence had conatur, that would mean tries as a main verb in the present tense.
If it had conatus est, that would mean tried as a full perfect-tense verb.

But this sentence already has a main verb, fatetur, so Latin uses the participle to add background information.