Latin Inscription on a bar: dilecti qui ob magnanimitatem suam discipulis

[MilesChristiSum]

On an old desk in a pub/inn I sometimes frequent, the following Latin inscription exists:

"dilecti qui ob magnanimitatem suam discipulis"

I can only come up with "Beloved by students [are] those for their generosity/high mindedness/magnanimity"

Am I at least ballpark, or is something like a main verb missing?

 

[Pacifica]

It's incomplete: "beloved [are] those who—or: the beloved ones who—because of their magnanimity... to the students...".

Either someone wrote a sentence fragment there for some reason, or they meant to express a complete idea (about kind teachers being loved by their students?) and got the grammar wrong so that it doesn't make sense.

 

[CSGD]

It's incomplete

It's a pub. What do you expect?

 

[Pacifica]

It has just occurred to me that it could be read, at a stretch, not as a complete sentence but at least as some kind of self-contained descriptive clause: "those who are (or were) loved by their students on account their magnanimity." That would require dilecti to logically belong to the relative clause while being placed outside it, but that sort of thing can happen (it would just be a little unfortunate in this particular case, I guess, because, coupled with the ellipsis of sunt—if that interpretation is correct—it makes the meaning of these context-less words less obvious).

 

[Pacifica]

Now, I wouldn't affirm that that is the meaning. The most instinctive reaction to the phrase is still an impression of incompleteness.