The imperfect indicative
The imperfect indicative is another way of narrating factual events in the past. As we have seen, the perfect views an action as a single action completed in the past. The imperfect, by contrast, expresses an action that is incomplete, repeated, continuous or ongoing, habitual, or in some other way not viewed as single and complete. To express similar ideas, English uses additional “helping” verbs: “she was going,” “he started to go,” “they used to go.”
For example, Hyginus describes the Cyclops by saying “he had one eye.” In English, we can use the simple past tense “had” to express this, but Latin makes clear that this was not a single, one-time action. It was almost a state of being: the Cyclops always had one eye, so Hyginus uses the imperfect in the phrase
unum oculum habebat.
habebat is the third singular of the imperfect indicative active. Let’s look at how it’s formed.
Formation of the imperfect tense
You form both the active and passive voice of the imperfect tense from the second principal part. As with the perfect active, you find the stem, and add the appropriate ending for the person, number and voice that you want.
stem: drop -re of second part
endings same for all conjugations.
The complete process to form the imperfect tense then looks like:
- (1) start by dropping -re from the second part:
habēre -> habē-
- (2) Add the appropriate ending. For this chapter, you should memorize the third person* endings for singular and plural (listed here).
habē- + -bat -> habebat
| Person and Number | Active ending | Passive ending | |
|---|---|---|---|
| third singular | -bat | -batur | |
| third plural | -bant | -bantur | -bantur |
The passive voice works in exactly the same way. Hyginus tells us that one of the Argonauts was Lynceus, who had a kind of night vision superpower: he could see in the dark because “he was not hindered by any darkeness.” Hyginus uses the verb inhibebatur in the imperfect to express the continuous, repeated event: Lynceus was never bothered by darkness. The verb inhibeo, “to restrain, prevent” is a compound of habeo with the following principal parts:
inhibeo, inhibēre, inhibui, inhibitus
(1) Find the stem by dropping -re from the second principal part:
inhibēre -> inhibē-
(2) Add the right ending. Here, we want the third singular ending for the passive voice:
inhibē- + -batur -> inhibebatur