Puella rogat utrum Athenae in Graecia pulchriores sint quam Roma.

It is an indirect question: the girl is not asking Rome or Athens directly; the sentence is reporting what she asks.

So:

• Puella rogat = The girl asks
• utrum ... sint = whether ... are

In Latin, an indirect question often works as the object of the main verb. So the whole clause after rogat is what she asks.

Here utrum means whether.

It introduces a yes/no question inside the sentence. In English, we say:

• She asks whether Athens is more beautiful than Rome.

Latin often uses utrum to introduce that kind of embedded question. It can sometimes imply whether ... or not, even if the or not is not stated explicitly.

Because indirect questions in Latin normally take the subjunctive.

So after rogat, Latin does not usually say utrum ... sunt, but utrum ... sint.

• sunt = indicative, they are
• sint = subjunctive, here still translated are

So sint does not change the basic English meaning very much here; it mainly shows that this is an indirect question.

Yes, it is one city in meaning, but Athenae is a grammatically plural name in Latin.

Some place names, especially ones borrowed from Greek, are plural in form. Athenae is one of them. So even though it refers to one city, Latin treats it as plural for agreement.

That is why the sentence uses:

• Athenae = nominative plural in form
• pulchriores = plural
• sint = plural

English does not do this; we say Athens is, but Latin says the equivalent of Athens are in grammar, though the meaning is still singular.

Because it agrees with Athenae.

Since Athenae is grammatically plural, any adjective describing it must also be plural. So:

• Athenae ... pulchriores sint = Athens is/are more beautiful

Even though English treats Athens as singular, Latin agreement follows the grammatical form, not the real-world idea of one city.

Pulchriores is the comparative form of pulcher meaning beautiful.

The comparative forms are:

• masculine/feminine: pulchrior = more beautiful
• neuter: pulchrius = more beautiful

Here pulchriores is nominative feminine plural (the same form is also masculine plural, but here it agrees with Athenae, which is feminine).

So it means:

• more beautiful

Because Athenae is not the object of rogat. It is the subject of sint inside the indirect question.

Structure:

• Puella rogat = main clause
• utrum Athenae ... sint quam Roma = indirect question acting as the thing asked

Inside that indirect question:

• Athenae = subject
• sint = verb
• pulchriores = predicate adjective

So the whole clause is the object of rogat, not the single word Athenae.

Because after quam in a comparison, Latin usually puts the second thing compared in the same case as the first.

Here the first item is Athenae, which is nominative, so the second item is also nominative:

• Athenae ... pulchriores sint quam Roma

That is exactly like English more beautiful than Rome.

So Roma is nominative because it is being compared directly with nominative Athenae.

Yes, Latin often allows an ablative of comparison instead of quam + same case.

So a sentence like this could also use:

• Athenae ... pulchriores sint Romā

That would still mean Athens is more beautiful than Rome.

But in your sentence, the author chose the very clear quam Roma construction instead.

Graecia is ablative singular here, because in with the meaning in or on for location takes the ablative.

So:

• in Graecia = in Greece

This is a good example of a form that looks the same as the nominative. For a first-declension singular noun like Graecia, the nominative singular and ablative singular are both Graecia.

Yes. It tells you where Athens is:

• Athens in Greece

It is part of the indirect question and gives more information about Athenae. Latin word order is flexible, so this phrase can sit near the noun it helps describe without needing a special marker like English sometimes does.

Latin word order is much freer than English word order because Latin endings already show what each word is doing.

This sentence is arranged in a very natural Latin way:

• Puella first: the topic or subject of the main clause
• rogat next: the main action
• utrum introduces the indirect question
• sint comes at the end of its clause, which is very common in Latin

English relies much more on word order, but Latin relies more on case endings and verb forms.

Because classical Latin has no definite article and no indefinite article.

So:

• puella can mean the girl or a girl
• Roma is simply Rome
• Athenae is simply Athens

The translator chooses the or a based on context and what sounds natural in English.