1. Your Adjectivy-Verby Friend
Participles
Your Adjectivy-Verby Friend

2. Perfect Participles Last time we looked at present participles.
Identified by 3rd declension endings (-ns, -ntem, etc.)
Always translated as ‘– ing’.
Always active (doing something).
This time we will be looking at the perfect participle.

3. Perfect participles are always passive.
They have been something-ed
They are verbs with the endings of nouns.
This is why it is so important to know the endings of simple verbs like puella, servus and mercator.
Like present participles, they have to agree with whatever they are referring to.
They agree in terms of:
Case (Nominative, Accusative, etc.)
Number (Singular or Plural)
Gender (Masculine, Feminine or Neuter)

4. For the millionth time…
Case
Girl
(feminine)
Slave
(masculine)
Temple
(neuter)
Singular
Plural
Nominative
Accusative
Genitive
Dative
Ablative

5. For the millionth time…
Case
Girl
(feminine)
Slave
(masculine)
Temple
(neuter)
Singular
Plural
Nominative
puella
puellae
servus
servi
templum
templa
Accusative
puellam
puellas
servum
servos
Genitive
puellarum
servorum
templi
templorum
Dative
puellis
servo
servis
templo
templis
Ablative

6. If you know those, then it’s simple…
Perfect participles take the fourth principle part and use the endings from the table we have just looked at.
porto, portare, portavi, portatum
Present Tense Infinitive Perfect Tense Supine
Depending on which case, number and gender is needed, an ending is taken to agree with whatever the participle is referring to.

7. The perfect participle is literally translated as ‘having been ______ed’
portatus = ‘having been carried’
(this is masc., sing., nom.)
tractos = ‘having been dragged’
(this is masc., pl., acc.)
You can clean it up in English if you want, to make it sound less clumsy.
‘the bread having been toasted’ ‘the wine having been poisoned’
‘the toasted bread’ ‘the poisoned wine’

8. In the following sentences, identify the participle and what it is agreeing with.
ancilla laudata ad forum ambulavit.
imperator lacrimavit propter milites interfectos.
senex templum deletum viderat.
soror mercatoris liberati laetissima erat.
epistulam dedi nuntio vocato.

9. With the following words, identify the meaning (having been ____ed) and the C/N/G of each:
laudatus
scriptos
occisas
portatae
aedificatum
capto
ducti
tractarum
visa
vocatos

10. The challenge…
If you have a perfect participle of a deponent verb (one that looks passive but is active), then it is active in meaning.
For example:
locutus (from loquor) = having spoken
secutus (from sequor) = having followed
profectus (from proficiscor) = having set out
Try these:
senex, haec verba locutus, e villa discessit.
regina, milites hortata, ad urbem contendit.