Latin Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers, and students wanting to discuss the finer points of the Latin language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
"detrahentem", though a present partiple and therefore active, (it seems to me) is used passively (like the past participle "detractum". .... Something like "She stuck the nail that had been (passively) pulled out with the wooden cup back into the grimy wall.
Guidance, please
I'm guessing this is the sentence you're talking about:
Tum clavum, qui detrahentem secutus cum camella lignea fuerat, fumoso parieti reddidit.
Then [Oenothea] replaced the nail, which had followed [her] pulling [it] down with the wooden cup, in the smoky wall.
The key is that quī is nominative, while detrahentem is accusative, so it can't be modifying the nail itself. Secūtus fuerat is the main verb here, and takes an accusative object: whatever is detrahentem is being followed.
So my interpretation is that the nail had followed (secūtus fuerat) an unspoken "her", pulling down an unspoken "it", with the wooden cup (cum camellā ligneā).
