Cum serva cubiculum purgaret, puella de mensa duas scutellas sustulit et in catino mala posuit.

Here cum means when or while. It introduces a subordinate clause that gives the background for the main action:

Cum serva cubiculum purgaret = While/When the slave-girl was cleaning the room

In this kind of sentence, cum often sets the scene before the main event happens.

Purgaret is imperfect subjunctive, not ordinary imperfect indicative.

That is very common after cum when Latin is giving background circumstances rather than just stating a simple fact. So the clause means something like:

while the slave-girl was cleaning the room

rather than making the cleaning the main point of the sentence.

So:

• purgabat = she was cleaning
• cum ... purgaret = while/when she was cleaning

The subjunctive here is a normal feature of cum clauses in past narration.

Latin usually does not need a subject pronoun unless it is being emphasized.

The verb ending already tells you who is doing the action:

• purgaret = she was cleaning
• sustulit = she took/lifted
• posuit = she placed

Latin often leaves out pronouns like he, she, and they unless the writer wants contrast or emphasis.

Latin has no articles. It does not have separate words for the, a, or an.

So:

• serva can mean a slave-girl or the slave-girl
• cubiculum can mean a room/bedroom or the room/bedroom
• puella can mean a girl or the girl

You understand which sense is meant from the context.

Because they do different jobs in the clause.

• serva is the subject of purgaret, so it is in the nominative
• cubiculum is the direct object of purgaret, so it is in the accusative

So:

• serva = the person doing the cleaning
• cubiculum = the thing being cleaned

De mensa means from the table or more literally down/off the table.

The preposition de often means:

• down from
• off
• about/concerning in other contexts

Here it shows removal from a surface, so de mensa is very natural for from the table.

Because duas scutellas is the direct object of sustulit.

• scutellas = dishes/bowls/plates depending on context
• duas = two

The numeral adjective duas must agree with scutellas in:

• gender: feminine
• number: plural
• case: accusative

So they go together as one phrase: two dishes.

Sustulit is the perfect tense of tollo.

Its principal parts are:

tollo, tollere, sustuli, sublatum

So:

• present: tollit = he/she lifts, takes away
• perfect: sustulit = he/she lifted, took away, picked up

This is an irregular-looking verb, so learners often have to memorize that the perfect stem is sustul-, not something that looks like toll-.

They describe the main actions of the sentence as completed events in the past:

• sustulit = she took/picked up
• posuit = she placed/put

Meanwhile, purgaret gives the background action that was already going on.

So the structure is roughly:

• background: while the slave-girl was cleaning
• main events: the girl took ... and placed ...

This is a very common pattern in Latin narrative.

Here mala means apples.

That is because it comes from the noun malum, mali = apple.

It can look confusing because mala could also be a form of the adjective malus, -a, -um = bad. But in this sentence:

• mala is neuter plural accusative
• it is the direct object of posuit

So it means apples, not bad things.

This is a very sensible question, because many learners expect in + accusative after a verb of motion.

Normally:

• in + accusative = into/onto
• in + ablative = in/on location

So in very strict classroom terms, many people would expect in catinum for into the bowl.

However, Latin can sometimes use in + ablative with verbs of placing when the focus is on the resulting position rather than the movement itself. In other words, in catino still means that the apples ended up in the bowl.

So if this form surprises you, your instinct is understandable. It is one of those places where real Latin usage is not always as neat as the basic rule.

Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order because the endings show the grammar.

The sentence is arranged like this:

• Cum serva cubiculum purgaret = background clause first
• puella = subject of the main clause
• de mensa duas scutellas sustulit = first action
• et in catino mala posuit = second action

A very literal order would be:

While the slave-girl the room was cleaning, the girl from the table two dishes picked up and in the bowl apples placed.

That sounds strange in English, but it is perfectly normal in Latin. The endings, not the position, tell you what each word is doing.

Yes. In this sentence, both are possible, depending on how you want to present the relationship between the actions.

• while emphasizes the ongoing background action
• when can sound a little more neutral or narrative

Because purgaret is imperfect, while is often a very natural choice:

While the slave-girl was cleaning the room, the girl...

But when is not wrong if the context supports it.