Mulus frenum non amat et caput movet, cum serva illud ei imponere conatur.

Mulus is the subject. It is nominative singular, so it means the mule.

It is the subject of both verbs in the first main clause: non amat and movet. Latin often uses one subject with two verbs joined by et.

Here frenum is the direct object of amat, so it is accusative singular.

The reason the form looks the same as a nominative is that frenum is a second-declension neuter noun. In neuter nouns, the nominative and accusative are often identical, so you have to tell its role from the sentence structure.

Literally, amat comes from amo, which often means love or be fond of.

But in English, with an object like a bridle, does not like sounds more natural than does not love. So the translation is idiomatic rather than word-for-word.

In this sentence, caput is accusative singular, the direct object of movet.

Its form can be confusing because caput is a third-declension neuter noun, and neuter nouns often have the same form in the nominative and accusative. The subject is still mulus, not caput.

Latin often leaves out possessive words when the owner is obvious from the context.

Since the mule is the subject, caput movet naturally means it moves its head. If Latin wanted to make the possession more explicit or emphatic, it could say caput suum.

Literally, it means moves its head.

In context, though, English might naturally say shakes its head or tosses its head, because the mule is resisting the bridle. So the Latin is a bit more literal than the most natural English phrasing.

Here it means when or while the slave woman.

That is because cum is introducing a whole clause: serva illud ei imponere conatur. In other words, serva is the subject of conatur. If cum meant with, it would be a preposition with a noun phrase, not the start of a new clause. In a text with macrons, the ablative with the slave woman would usually appear as cum servā.

Because not every cum clause uses the subjunctive.

Here cum is simply temporal, meaning when or while, and a straightforward temporal cum often takes the indicative. The subjunctive is more common when cum has a more circumstantial, causal, or concessive sense.

Conatur is from conor, a deponent verb.

Deponent verbs use passive forms but have active meanings. So although conatur looks passive in form, it means he/she/it tries.

It is a complementary infinitive after conatur.

Latin often uses an infinitive after verbs like try, want, begin, and similar verbs to complete the sense. So conatur imponere means tries to put on.

Illud refers back to frenum.

It is neuter singular accusative, matching frenum in gender and number and serving as the object of imponere. Latin pronouns agree with the grammatical gender of the noun they refer to, so because frenum is neuter, the pronoun is neuter too.

Because imponere commonly takes two complements in Latin:

• the thing being placed in the accusative
• the person or thing it is placed on in the dative

So illud is the thing being put on, and ei means on him/on it or more literally to him/to it. Here ei refers to the mule.

Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order because Latin uses endings to show grammatical function.

So Latin can say Mulus frenum non amat instead of something more English-like such as The mule does not like the bridle, and illud ei imponere instead of a stricter English sequence. The original order may also give a little extra focus to frenum and illud, keeping the bridle prominent in the sentence.