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An English pluperfect tense is sometimes appropriate for translating this Latin tense: Atreī fīliī, quī Pelope nātus fuit (Cicero) [217] 'sons of Atreus, who (himself) was born (had been born) from Pelops' In the following examples, the double perfect refers to a situation which existed a long time earlier, before Ovid was exiled:
The passive tenses also have feminine and neuter forms, e.g. amāta est "she was loved", nūntiātum est "it was announced". Forms made with fuī instead of sum and forem instead of essem are also found, for example amātus fuī, amātus fuerō, amātus forem and so on, but these are not common in classical Latin. See Latin tenses.
In Latin, the pluperfect (plus quam perfectum) is formed without an auxiliary verb in the active voice, and with an auxiliary verb plus the perfect passive participle in the passive voice. For example, in the indicative mood: Pecuniam mercatori dederat. ("He had given money to the merchant"; active) Pecunia mercatori datus erat.
The usual tense used with postquam is the perfect indicative, when the length of time is given the tense is usually pluperfect: [121] (Hamilcar) nōnō annō postquam in Hispāniam vēnerat occīsus est (Nepos) [122] "Hamilcar was killed in the ninth year after he came to Spain."
The normal prose practice is to use either a past tense of dēbeō 'I have a duty to' or oportet 'it is proper' with the infinitive, or else a gerundive with a past tense of sum. The jussive pluperfect is also fairly uncommon. The following examples are from Cicero, again using the negative nē: [41] nē popōscissēs (Cicero) [42]
In other sentences, the pluperfect subjunctive is a transformation of a future perfect indicative, put into historic sequence. The original words of the following sentence would presumably have been tū, sī aliter fēcerīs , iniūriam Caesarī faciēs 'if you do (will have done) otherwise, you will be doing Caesar a disservice':
Latin Example Meaning Comment 'indicative future perfect' dūcere coeperō: present in future 'I will be leading' 'indicative perfect' dūcere coepī: present in present 'I am leading' 'indicative pluperfect' dūcere coeperam: present in past 'I was leading' 'subjunctive perfect' dūcere coeperim-- 'whether I am leading' 'subjunctive pluperfect'
Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood.