Perfect Passive Participle
The perfect passive participle, or PPP for short, is already familiar to you from the dictionary entries of verbs: the PPP is the 4th principal part and it functions as a 2-1-2 adjective.
When translated literally, the PPP means “(having been) [verb]ed.” For example, amatus puer = “the boy, having been loved” or “the loved boy.” This, however, sounds like stilted translation-ese rather than actual English, so there are a number of ways to make the translation of the PPP – and participles in general – more idiomatic in English. See the section within this module on translating participles.
Check out these examples of the PPP in context. Remember that as a verbal adjective, the participle can govern appropriate constructions. In this case, with a perfect passive participle, we can use elements like ablatives of agent to indicate who performed the action of the passive participle.
- urbs, ā rege horribilī recta, cum mortuus est laeta fuit. - The city, having been ruled by the horrible king, was happy when he died.
- frātrēs ā patre eōrum missōs vīdimus. - We saw the brothers, having been sent by their father.
Note that there is no perfect active participle, BUT there is a special consideration with deponent verbs. The PPP of a deponent verb (found in its third principal part), like other forms of the deponent verb, is passive in form but active in meaning. So, we translate the PPP of a deponent verb as “having (blank)ed”. For example:
- puer, verba illa locutus, discessit. - The boy, having spoken those words, departed.