Postea puer servae gratias agit et dicit se eam iterum non offendere velle.

Servae is dative singular of serva, meaning to the slave-girl / to the maidservant.

It is dative because the expression gratias agere takes the person being thanked in the dative:

• alicui gratias agere = to give thanks to someone
• so servae gratias agit = he gives thanks to the slave-girl / he thanks the slave-girl

So although English uses thanks someone, Latin here uses a structure more like gives thanks to someone.

Gratias agit is a very common Latin idiom meaning gives thanks or simply thanks.

Literally:

• gratias = thanks
• agit = he does / drives / performs, but in this idiom the whole phrase means he gives thanks

So:

• servae gratias agit = he thanks the slave-girl

This is just the normal Latin way to express thanking.

Latin normally uses gratias in the plural in this expression.

So:

• gratias agere = to give thanks
• gratias tibi ago = I thank you

You can think of gratias here as a fixed idiomatic plural, much like English thanks, which is also plural in form.

Agit is:

• 3rd person singular
• present tense
• active voice
• indicative mood

from the verb ago, agere.

So agit means he does / he drives / he acts, but in gratias agit the phrase means he gives thanks or he thanks.

Since the subject is puer (the boy), agit is singular: the boy thanks.

This is a classic Latin indirect statement structure.

After a verb like dicit (he says), Latin often uses:

• an accusative subject
• plus one or more infinitives

Here is the structure:

• dicit = he says
• se = himself (accusative subject of the infinitives)
• eam = her (object of offendere)
• offendere = to offend
• velle = to want

So literally it is something like:

• he says himself her again not to offend to want

Better English:

• he says that he does not want to offend her again

So the whole phrase is an indirect statement after dicit.

Se is the reflexive pronoun in the accusative, and it refers back to the subject of the main verb.

Here, the main verb is dicit, whose subject is puer. So:

• puer ... dicit se ... velle = the boy says that he ... wants

Because the subject inside the indirect statement is the same person as the subject of dicit, Latin uses se.

So se here means:

• himself, or more naturally in English,
• he

Eam is accusative singular feminine of ea, id, meaning her.

It refers back to servae / serva, the female servant.

So:

• se eam ... offendere velle = that he wants to offend her ...

More naturally with the negation:

• that he does not want to offend her again

Eam is accusative because it is the direct object of offendere.

• offendere aliquem = to offend someone

So:

• eam offendere = to offend her

Even though servae earlier was dative after gratias agit, once we get to offendere, Latin uses the accusative for the person offended.

After dicit, Latin normally uses indirect statement, not a full new finite clause with that.

So instead of something like:

• he says that he does not want...

Latin says:

• dicit se ... velle

with velle as an infinitive.

That is why we get:

• dicit se eam iterum non offendere velle
• literally, he says himself not to want to offend her again
• natural English, he says that he does not want to offend her again

So velle is there because it belongs to the indirect statement construction.

Because velle itself means to want, and it commonly takes another infinitive to say want to do something.

So:

• velle = to want
• offendere = to offend
• offendere velle = to want to offend

Then all of that is placed into indirect statement after dicit:

• dicit se eam iterum non offendere velle
• he says that he does not want to offend her again

So the roles are:

• se = subject of velle
• eam = object of offendere
• offendere = action wanted
• velle = verb of wanting

Non negates the verbal idea offendere velle.

So the sense is:

• not to want to offend her again
• more natural English: that he does not want to offend her again

In practice, English usually understands this as the negation of want:

• he does not want to offend her again

Latin word order is flexible, so non does not always stand exactly where an English speaker might expect.

Iterum means again.

It goes with offendere, so:

• eam iterum offendere = to offend her again

With the negation included:

• eam iterum non offendere velle = to not want to offend her again
• natural English: to not want to offend her again or not to want to offend her again

So iterum tells you the offending would be a repeated action.

Postea is an adverb meaning afterwards, later, or after that.

It sets the scene in time:

• Postea puer servae gratias agit...
• Afterwards the boy thanks the slave-girl...

So it tells us that this happens after some earlier event.

The word order is natural, but Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order.

This sentence is:

• Postea puer servae gratias agit et dicit se eam iterum non offendere velle.

Latin could move some words around without changing the basic meaning, because the endings show their jobs:

• puer is nominative, so it is the subject
• servae is dative, so it is the person thanked
• se and eam are accusative, so they belong to the indirect statement and the verb offendere

That said, the given order is clear and quite readable:

1. Postea = time
2. puer = subject
3. servae gratias agit = first action
4. et dicit... = second action
5. se eam iterum non offendere velle = what he says

Because Latin uses se to show that the subject of the indirect statement is the same as the subject of dicit.

So instead of saying something equivalent to:

• the boy says that the boy...

Latin simply says:

• puer ... dicit se...

This is more natural in Latin and avoids unnecessary repetition.

Yes, roughly:

• se = himself
• eam = her
• iterum = again
• non = not
• offendere = to offend
• velle = to want

So very literally:

• himself her again not to offend to want

But that is not good English. A proper English translation is:

• that he does not want to offend her again

This is a good example of why Latin learners need to understand the construction, not just translate word by word.