In light of this, consider the example of Oedipus:
PRESENT [+0]: Today I am putting out my eyes with my wife's brooches.
IMPERFECT [-1]: Because I married my own mother.
PERFECT [-1]: And we have had four children together.
PLUPERFECT [-2]: But before that I had killed my father.
FUTURE [+1]: So I will go to Athens and be translated into heaven (according to Sophocles).
FUTURE PERFECT [+.5]: But before arriving there, I will have wandered around Greece for many years.
Thus, the perfect and imperfect tenses happen at the same time (-1, i.e. one step back in time) but describe the past in different ways, entailing what linguists call different "aspects" of the verb. As we have noted before (see Chapter 5), the imperfect shows continuous, habitual or incomplete action in the past; the perfect tense shows stopped or completed action in the past. The perfect tense, then, covers a number of different English usages and can be translated in various ways: saw (the simple past), did see (the affirmative form of the past tense) and has/have seen (the perfective which shows special impact on the present).
The pluperfect tense represents "two steps" back in the past—in order to have a pluperfect verb form, there must be a past reference point from which the pluperfect ("more-completed") shows action happening even further back in the past—"I didn't do my homework yesterday [yesterday = reference point in the past] and I hadn't done it the day before either [the day before yesterday = two steps back in time]." The future perfect shows action prior to the future: "By the time I will turn in my homework on Tuesday, I will have missed the Monday deadline by a day."
Also, note the order in which the tenses are presented. Putting the present and perfect tenses into a symmetrical arrangement is designed to facilitate their memorization:
| Present [= +0] | Perfect [= -1] |
| Imperfect [= -1] | Pluperfect [= -2] |
| Future [= +1] | Future Perfect [= +.5] |
D. The Principal Parts of the Verb
You are now responsible for memorizing the four principal parts of all Latin verbs which we have encountered through Chapter 12. We will immediately begin using the third principal part (representing the perfect active system) of all the verbs we know. And while Wheelock does not introduce until later the concept and use of the fourth principal part (representing the perfect passive system), you are responsible for memorizing this form for each verb we have learned up to now and will learn in subsequent chapters. Otherwise, when we finally get to perfect passives, you will have to do a great deal of memorization along with mastering the use and function of the perfect passive system. On balance, it's better to start memorizing now the fourth principal parts of verbs rather than later to have to embrace both form and function at the same time.
Note that each principal part conveys essential information about the Latin verb:
• The First Principal Part (the first person singular present indicative active) is the "dictionary form," the form under which one looks up the verb in the dictionary or, in this case, the back of the book.
• The Second Principal Part (the present active infinitive) dictates into which conjugation the verb fits, important information for determining how the future tense, in particular, is formed.
• With the removal of the final -i, the Third Principal Part (the first person singular perfect indicative active) shows the perfect stem from which all (active) perfect forms are created.
• And finally the Fourth Principal Part (the perfect passive participle) represents the perfect passive, "having been X-ed". [You are not responsible for anything more than memorizing the Latin form of Fourth Principal Part, but if you can translate it now even in a basic English form, you will be just that much further ahead when we encounter its use later.]
E. Handout
Click here for a worksheet on perfect forms.
deus: Di (nominative plural) and dis (dative/ablative plural) are contracted forms used widely in Latin.
libertas: As a third-declension noun ending in -tas/-tatis, this word must be feminine in gender (see Wheelock, page 32, note 2).
Asia: Note that in antiquity this name referred to the area we now call Turkey. Because the Romans had little idea of the scope or nature of the huge land mass now called Asia, the name was extended to the entire continent.
Caesar: Note that like all nouns in Latin names decline and therefore must be assigned to a declensional category. Caesar belongs to the third declension.
Practice and Review
14. In this sentence, "to him" cannot be represented by the dative case. Since it means "to(ward) him," how should it be translated?