Formation
The future indicative tense of regular verbs ends in either -bō or -bor or in -am or -ar. The future of sum and possum ends in erō.
Irregular verbs:
Passive and deponent verbs:
A future meaning can also be expressed using a periphrastic future such as ductūrus sum 'I am going to lead' (see below).
Usage
There is no distinction in the future between perfective and imperfective aspect, so that dūcam can mean either 'I will lead' or 'I will be leading'.
Future event or situation
The future tense can describe an event or a situation in the near or distant future:
In subordinate clauses
A difference between Latin and English is that in subordinate clauses such as 'if this happens in future', English uses the present tense, but Latin usually uses the future.[41]
Occasionally, however, a present tense can be used in the subordinate clause:[41]
Polite requests
The future can also be used for polite requests, as when Cicero sends greetings to his friend Atticus's wife and daughter:
Formation
The imperfect indicative tense of regular verbs ends in -bam or -bar in all verbs except sum and possum, when it ends in -ram.
Irregular verbs:
Passive and deponent verbs:
Usage
The imperfect indicative generally has an imperfective meaning and describes situations in the past. Often the imperfect can be translated into English as 'was doing', but sometimes the simple tense 'did' or expressions such as 'used to do', 'would do', 'kept doing', 'began to do', 'had been doing' are more appropriate.
Situation at a particular time
A common use of the imperfect is to describe a situation that already existed at a particular moment:
Often an expression such as tum 'then' or eō tempore 'at that time' is added:
Vivid description
The use of the imperfect rather than the perfect can be used to make a scene more vivid, as with this sentence of Cicero's:
The passage is commented on by Aulus Gellius. He says that the use of caedēbātur rather than caesus est creates a 'drawn-out vivid description' (diūtīna repraesentātiō);[55] that is to say, making it seem to the audience that the scene is taking place in front of them.
So frequently in descriptions of battles, the imperfect is used to describe what was happening at a particular moment, as though seen through the eyes of an observer:[56]
'Began doing'
Another meaning is inceptive, describing a situation that began at a certain moment and continued indefinitely. Often in English it is translated with 'began':[58]
Habitual use
The imperfect tense can describe a situation that used to take place regularly or habitually:
But in sentences like the following, in which the verb has a quasi-negative meaning ('he didn't write as well as he spoke'), the perfect can be used:[62]
Iterative use
Similar to the above is the iterative or 'frequentative'[64] use of the imperfect, describing what something that kept on happening or which happened on an indefinite number of occasions:
Geographical description
Sometimes the imperfect is used for description of the surroundings as they appeared at the time of the story:
Unfinished action
Another use is to describe an action that someone was intending to do, or about to do, but which never actually took place, or which was interrupted by another event:[67]
Pluperfect continuous meaning
When the imperfect tense is used with a length of time it means 'had done' or 'had been doing', referring to a situation which had been going on for some time and was still going on.[71] The adverb iam 'by now' is sometimes added:
Epistolary imperfect
Sometimes in letters a writer imagines himself in the position of the recipient and uses an imperfect tense to describe a situation which for the writer himself is present:[77]
Other tenses can also be used from the point of view of the reader, such as the pluperfect and the perfect in the example below:
Potential meaning ('would be')
Sometimes the imperfect of sum is used with a potential meaning ('would be'):[82]
Formation
The perfect indicative active tense is the third principal part given in Latin dictionaries. In most verbs it uses a different stem from the present tense; for example, the perfect tense of dūcō 'I lead' is dūxī 'I led'.
The usual form of the 3rd pl is -ērunt. The ending -ēre is common in some authors, such as Livy, and in poetry. The form -ĕrunt is sometimes found in poetry.[85]
In the 1st conjugation, the 2nd sg, 2nd pl, and 3rd pl are often contracted, for example amāstī, amāstis, amārunt. Contracted forms such as dīxtī (for dīxistī) are also sometimes found, especially in Plautus.
Irregular verbs:
Passive and deponent verbs
The forms with fuī are much less common. These forms are discussed in a separate section below.
The participle changes in gender and number to agree with the subject; for example, it can be plural or feminine:
The auxiliary verb with these tenses is usually placed after the participle, but sometimes precedes. This often happens when the auxiliary follows a focussed word, a quantity word, or a conjunction:[88]
Sometimes the auxiliary verb est or sunt is omitted. This style is often found in the historian Livy:
Not every perfect participle combined with est is a perfect tense. Thus in the examples below, the participle does not refer to any event but is merely descriptive or adjectival:
Usage
Past event
The perfect most frequently narrates an event in the past. The usual translation is the simple English past tense with '-ed' or the equivalent:
The perfect passive and deponent can also be used to describe an event in the past:
Present perfect meaning
The perfect active can also be used like the English present perfect ('I have done'):[99]
The perfect passive and perfect deponent can be used like an English perfect tense, describing a present state resulting from an earlier event:[105]
The negative of the perfect often has the meaning 'has not yet done':
Experiential meaning
As with the English perfect, the Latin perfect can sometimes be used to relate experiences which have happened several times in the past:
It can also be used with semper to describe what has always been the case:
Gnomic perfect
Similar to this is the 'gnomic perfect', which states a general truth based on past experience:[114][115]
No longer existing situation
The perfect can sometimes be used to describe a situation which no longer exists:
In a temporal or relative clause
After the conjunction cum, the perfect indicative often has in iterative meaning (= "whenever").[120] In English the present tense is often used:
The perfect tense is also used in temporal clauses after postquam 'after', ubi 'when', ut 'as soon as', and simulac 'as soon as'. Here English often uses the pluperfect tense:
It is also used in a past-time relative clause referring to an anterior action where similarly English might use a pluperfect:
Length of time
The perfect, not the imperfect, is used when a situation is said to have lasted in the past for a certain length of time, but is now over.[62] (The imperfect, however, with a length of time, is used for a situation which was still going on at the time referred to; see the examples above.)
However, the phrase iam diū with the perfect tense means 'long ago':
Meminī, ōdī, nōvī
Certain verbs, of which the most common are meminī 'I remember', ōdī 'I hate', and nōvī 'I know', are used in the perfect tense but have the meaning of a present tense:
The future perfect and pluperfect of these verbs serve as the equivalent of a future or imperfect tense: meminerō 'I will remember', memineram 'I remembered'. meminī has an imperative mementō 'remember!' There is also a subjunctive which can be used in a hortatory sense:
The verb nōvī usually means 'I know':
But sometimes the perfect nōvī has a past meaning, 'I became acquainted with' or 'I got to know':
The perfect of cōnsuēscō, cōnsuēvī 'I have grown accustomed', is also often used with a present meaning:[138]
Eram vs fuī
In the verb sum 'I am', the imperfect tense eram and the perfect fuī both mean 'I was', but in Latin there is usually a difference. As with other verbs, the perfect is usually used when the length of time is mentioned:
But if the situation was still continuing at the time referred to, the imperfect is used:
The perfect is also used when the sentence describes an event rather than a state:
Another use of the perfect fuī is to describe a former state, emphasising that it is no longer in existence:[114]
However, if a time adverb such as ōlim 'once upon a time' is added, there is no need for the perfect tense and the imperfect eram is more usual:
The perfect is also used in sentences such as the following, which describe a permanent state, as opposed to the imperfect, which describes a temporary one:[150]
According to Pinkster, the use of erat in these two examples would sound wrong. 'In both cases the reader would want to know "What happened next?"'[153]
For geographical description, on the other hand, erat is used, describing the landscape was it was at the time of the narrative:
The use of fuit here would imply that there used to be a bridge, but that it has now gone.
The perfect must also be used with adverbs such as semel 'once', bis 'twice', ter 'three times', which imply that the situation is now over:[156]
The perfect is also used for something which has always been (or never been) the case:
The adverb saepe, when referring to a past period of time, can have either tense:
There are also some types of sentences where either tense may be used indifferently, for example when describing someone's name or character:
The equivalent of these two tenses, Spanish era and fui both meaning 'I was', still exist in Spanish and Portuguese today. (See Spanish conjugation, Portuguese verb conjugation.)
Future perfect indicative[edit]
Formation[edit]
The future perfect active originally had a short -i-, while the perfect subjunctive had a long -ī-, but by the time of Cicero the two forms had become confused. It seems that Catullus and Cicero usually pronounced the future perfect with a long ī.[162] Virgil has a short i for both tenses; Horace uses both forms for both tenses; Ovid uses both forms for the future perfect, but a long i in the perfect subjunctive.[163]
Perfect tenses made with habeō[edit]
Ductum habeō[edit]
Occasionally a perfect tense is made using the perfect participle combined with various tenses of the verb habeō 'I have'. This became the regular way of forming the perfect tense in French and Italian.[242]
According to Gildersleeve and Lodge, this form of the perfect 'is not a mere circumlocution for the Perfect, but lays particular stress on the maintenance of the result'.[115] However, in some cases it can be translated simply as a perfect tense in English:
Periphrastic future tenses[edit]
Ductūrus sum[edit]
The future participle with the present tense of sum is known as the periphrastic future. It describes a person's intention at the present time. It can be translated with 'going to', 'planning to', 'intending to', or by using the future continuous 'I'll be doing':
Formation
The imperfect subjunctive, even in passive and deponent verbs, looks like an active infinitive with an ending:
Irregular verbs:
Passive and deponent verbs:
Usage
The imperfect subjunctive is used in situations similar to the present subjunctive above, but in a past-time context.
The imperfect and pluperfect subjunctives can describe something which should have been done in the past, but which it is now too late for:[331][332]
This usage is quite common in Plautus[336] but rare in later Latin. The normal prose practice is to use either a past tense of dēbeō 'I have a duty to' or oportet 'it is proper' with the infinitive, or else a gerundive with a past tense of sum.
The imperfect subjunctive can also be used to represent an imagined or wished for situation in present time:[337]
In a conditional clause representing an unreal situation in present time, the imperfect subjunctive is used in both clauses:
Sometimes, however, an imperfect subjunctive refers to an unreal situation in the past rather than the present:[342]
The 2nd person imperfect subjunctive when potential is nearly always indefinite and generalising, i.e. an imaginary 'you':[344]
In a conditional clause of comparison, the imperfect subjunctive indicates an imagined situation not at the present time but contemporary with the main verb:
For other examples of this see Latin conditional clauses#Conditional clauses of comparison.
In indirect questions in a historic context, an imperfect subjunctive usually represents the transformation of a present indicative.[347] In the examples below the imperfect subjunctive represents a situation which is contemporary with the main verb:
In other sentences, however, the imperfect subjunctive is prospective; that is, it represents an action which is future relative to the main verb:[350] (In indirect sentences of this kind there is in fact no difference between the vivid future and the ideal future conditional.)[351]
The imperfect subjunctive is also used for indirect commands, clauses of fearing or indirect questions after a main verb in the past tense:
It can also have a prospective or future meaning in a relative clause:[358]
After verbs meaning 'it happened that...', the imperfect subjunctive is always used even of a simple perfective action, which, if the grammatical construction did not require a subjunctive, would be expressed by a perfect indicative:[360]
Following cum 'when, while', however, the imperfect subjunctive has the meaning of an imperfect indicative. This is very common: