Introduction to participles

Participles are adjectives made from verbs. Like every Latin adjective, they agree in gender, case and number with the noun they describe, but they express a verbal idea that also has tense and voice!

English makes very limited use of participles. Consider these two sentences.

Each year, Gallup compiles a list of most admired people.

Admiring crowds flocked to the Botanical Garden to see the seasonal blooms.

The word admired is an adjective describing people (What kind of people does Gallup list? admired people.)

The word Admiring is an adjective describing crowds. (What kind of crowds came? admiring crowds.)

Both are formed from the English verb “to admire”. Admired is passive voice: the people Gallup lists are being admired (they receive the action of “to admire”). Admiring is active voice: the crowds actively admire the blossoms (they perform the action of “to admire”).

You already learn one participle when you learn principle parts of the verb: the fourth principle part is a participle that is passive voice, and perfect tense. (Now you know that technically the perfect passive tense is formed by combining the perfect passive participle with forms of the verb sum.)

Participles in Latin

Latin uses participles frequently, and can connect a noun to the circumstances in many different ways. Often, these are similar to other dependent verbal constructions corresponding to a dependent clause in English translation. Examples include:

• participles can indicate relations of time or circumstance (similar to a temporal clause)
• participles can identify a person or thing (similar to a relative clause)
• participles can suggest a causal relation (like an English clause beginning “because…)
• participles can suggest a concessive relation (like English “although…”)

Let’s look at a story in Hyginus using the first-conjugation verb delasso, delassare, delassavi, delassatus/a/um, “to tire (someone) out.” The giant Antaeus used to force visitors to wrestle with him; he would exhaust them, then kill them. (He got his turn when he tried to pull this trick on Hercules: Hyginus, chapter 31.) First, a sentence with no participles:

Hospites delassabantur, et Antaeus eos interficiebat.

The visitors would be exhausted (passive voice), and Antaeus would kill them.

Now let’s look at how Hyginus phrases that:

Antaeus hospites delassatos interficiebat.

delassatos is masculine, accusative, plural, agreeing with hospites, the direct object of the verb: “Antaeus used to kill the visitors.” It is passive voice, and perfect tense: the visitors are identified as having already been worn out before Antaeus killed them. How should we interpret it? Here are some possibilities:

Time: “After the guests were exhausted, Antaeus killed them.” (Since it’s perfect tense, we know they were exhausted before Antaeus killed them.)

Circumstance: “Once the guests were exhausted, Antaeus killed them.”

Identification: “Antaeus killed the guests, who were exhausted.”

Causation: “Because the guests were exhausted, Antaeus killed them.”

Concession: “Although the guests were exahausted, Antaeus killed them.”

How can we decide among all these possibilities?? As we’ve been emphaiszing all year, we need to read in context. In this story the last two options make no sense. Antaeus deliberately exhausted the guests, in order to kill them: he didn’t kill them because they were tired! And he certainly didn’t kill them despite the fact that they were tired!

In another context, however, those might be good options for translating the perfect participle of delasso. Here are examples that you could easily interpret as causal:

Delassati nolebant laborare.

Because they were exhausted, they were unwilling to work.

Delassati non poterant profugere.

Because they were exhausted, they were unable to escape.

For a concessive idea, consider this:

Ulixes delassatus tamen iuvenes volebat servare.

“Although he was exhausted, Ulysses nevertheless wanted to save the youths.”

Translating participles

Class preparation

Each of the following (English) sentences, is matched with a (Latin) participial express describing a highlighted noun or pronoun. Suggest one or more possible translations for the Latin.

1. Hercules brought the golden apples to Eurytheus. missus ab Eurystheo
2. Hercules nevertheless killed his wife Megara.amatam
3. Hercules departed from Oechalia. captam
4. Hercules sent Iole to Deianira. abductam
5. Hercules rescued Deianira. sublatam in aqua a Nesso centauro.
6. Deinira unwittingly killed Hercules with the poison. dato a Nesso

Gloss: venenum, i, (n), “poison”

---