Latin Participles: amans, amatus, amaturus

A participle is a verb dressed as an adjective. Like a verb it has a tense and a voice; like an adjective it agrees with a noun. Latin has three, and a gap where English keeps its favourite.

Missing: being called and, above all, having called.

The three participles

Present active: -ns, -ntis

Add -ns to the present stem; the genitive is -ntis. The third and fourth conjugations put an -e- in front:

It declines like the adjective ingens, ingentis: accusative vocantem, plural vocantes.

The ablative is usually -e (a rege vocante, by the king as he calls), but -i when the participle has become a plain adjective.

• Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. - I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts. (Virgil, Aeneid 2.49)

Perfect passive: the fourth principal part

The dictionary's fourth form, declined like bonus, bona, bonum:

• Urbem captam vidimus. - We saw the captured city.
• Verba dicta audivimus. - We heard the words (that had been) spoken.

Future active: -urus

The same stem plus -urus, also like bonus:

Futurus gave English future. And moriturus gave the line Suetonius reports from the fighters at a show for the emperor Claudius:

• morituri te salutant - those about to die salute you (Suetonius, Claudius 21.6, after a greeting to the emperor)

The gap: no "having done"

Latin has no perfect active participle for ordinary verbs. English uses one all the time (having seen the city, he turned back); Latin cannot.

If the noun looks like the doer rather than the victim, you have misread something. Latin says having seen the city with a cum clause, with two verbs joined by et, or with the ablative absolute (below).

Deponents fill the gap

A deponent's perfect participle is active, so these are the only ones that can say having done:

• Rex, haec locutus, abiit. - Having said this, the king went away.

A handful of ordinary verbs have active ones too, such as cenatus, having dined, and iuratus, having sworn. They are exceptions you will recognise when you meet them.

Unfold it into a clause

A participle is a clause folded into one word. Word for word, Milites victi fugerunt is the soldiers, having been beaten, fled: clear, and bad English. Unfold it:

• Milites victi fugerunt. - The soldiers fled because they had been beaten.

The participle carries no conjunction, so you choose one:

The words around it help. A tamen (however) in the main clause usually means although. A participle right beside its noun, with nothing between them, is usually just describing it: aqua currens, running water.

Tense is relative to the main verb

A participle's tense is measured from the main verb, not from now, just like the infinitives in indirect statement:

So a present participle beside a past main verb turns into an English past: videns in rex videns dixit is seeing in form and when he saw in sense.

Participles as nouns

Drop the noun, and the participle becomes one, like any Latin adjective:

Res Gestae is the title of the account Augustus wrote of his own achievements.

One step further: the ablative absolute

When a noun and its participle have no job in the rest of the sentence, Latin puts both into the ablative and sets them apart:

• Urbe capta, milites redierunt. - When the city had been captured, the soldiers went back.

That is the ablative absolute, Latin's main way round the missing having done. It has its own lesson.

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Learn the three on one verb: vocans, vocatus, vocaturus.
2. Every time you meet a participle, choose the English conjunction before you translate.
3. Then read the ablative absolute.