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In Living Latin: A Graded Reader (The Paideia Institute), Chapter XXXIX contains the following sentence:

Et deinde Caesar ultima voce fertur Marco Bruto dixisse 'Et tu Brute'

I parse it as:

(Et deinde) fertur (Caesar (ultima voce) (Marco Bruto) dixisse 'Et tu Brute')

But why does the clause introduced by "fertur" not have its subject in the accusative?

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Because fertur is not impersonal: Caesar is the subject of the verb, not the subject of the indirect statement.

Although you could make this an impersonal construction, it's simply passive, with the agent left off. You should parse it instead as:

Caesar fertur [ab aliis] dixisse...

In the active, you'd change this around:

[Alii] ferunt Caesarem dixisse...

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  • I think it is quite misleading to add the accusative pronoun [eum] in your first example. Why did you add it? Furthermore, it could also be useful to clarify that the verb fertur can be used in a personal nominativus cum infinitivo construction (the one at issue here: Caesar fertur dixisse...) but also in the impersonal accusativus cum infinitivo one (fertur Caesarem dixisse...).
    – Mitomino
    Commented Aug 9 at 19:36
  • @Mitomino It was a bad edit. Fixed. Re impersonal, the OP already included that reading in his question.
    – cmw ♦
    Commented Aug 9 at 19:41
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    OK but a more explicit reference to the so-called Nominativus cum Infinitivo (NcI) construction could also be useful for him, I think. It seems that he is not acquainted with the NcI construction.
    – Mitomino
    Commented Aug 9 at 19:48

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