"Vinum viginti nummis constat."

Translation: Wine costs twenty coins.

[allenfrang]

Is vinum in the accusative here? If so, why?

[Danielconcasco]

Vinum is a 2nd declension neuter, so it looks accusative at first. Words like this have -um in the nominative and accusative.

[Emma629680]

Does "nummis" refer to a specific kind of coin? Or did the Romans only use one type of coin?

[MagistraHenry]

Nummus is a generic term for coin (from which English gets the word numismatics), but Romans had names for different materials/values like as, sestertius, argenteus, and aureus.

[Oldf1eFo]

... and denarii :-)

Im not sure this sentence is very natural in English or Latin tbh. Have you ever specified a price in 'coins'?

[psittacus_ebrius]

They also didn't specify what kind of wine, perhaps everything costs 20 coins, the high quality wine costs more valuable coins and the low quality wine costs less valuable coins.

I want to try the wine that costs 20 solidi :-)

[OzXDkf]

Well, have you ever specified a price in 'male deer' ? The wine costs twenty BUCKS ))

[Santiago_G18]

Why is it ''nummis'' and not ''nummos''?

[justprettygay]

nummos would be the accusative, but in this case we need an ablative!
I don't think the ablative has been covered in the lections yet, but we can't really ask "/what/ does the wine cost", instead it's "/how much/ does the wine cost". this is one but many uses of the ablative, but i don't remember which rules exactly apply to it, so i won't give you any. i'm sure the course will cover it!

[AnAlienHere]

Shouldn't there be a `theʼ before the word Wine.?

[MagistraHenry]

It's optional.

[Noah357620]

I agree

[PERCE_NEIGE]

"The wine costs..." means this particular wine, here, costs...
"Wine costs" means wine in general, costs.

Both are ok.

[deactivated user]

So both are correct

[AnCatDubh]

Is nummīs dative or ablative?

[justprettygay]

Ablative! (We ask /how much/, which already points towards an ablative. in this case we also have the verb "constare", which requires an ablative to mean "cost" in the first place)

[Eva242549]

Must be Falernian....

[JoshuaLatin]

Wine costs 20 coins
Red Wine costs 30 coins
Bread costs 10 coins

[Liang972]

How is constat conjugated? They accept my answer every time I mix up constat and constant. Also, I don't see anywhere else that constat means costs.

[psittacus_ebrius]

consto is first conjugation (with the infinitive -are)

For the usage please see: II, B, 6. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=consto

[Starkadh]

Shouldn't "coin" be "moneta"?
A nummus was a tiny coin used in the Bizantine Empire... just a kind of "moneta".

[Danielconcasco]

Well, that's the problem with vocabulary that doesn't translate. Nummus is nummus, but that doesn't help new learners. We translate nummus and denarius and all other coin words as coin. We do accept nummuses and nummi.

EDIT: And no, they were not limited to the Byzantine Empire.