THE  PARTICIPLE  AS   THE  EQUIVALENT  OF  A  CLAUSE      121

arrangement. The main verb is * defend ': ' accompHshed ' should
stand in a result clause with ' enemy ' as subject, and the * though '
clause should be expressed by an ablative absolute.
 

LESSON  XXVIII

THE PARTICIPLE AS THE EQUIVALENT OF A CLAUSE

(Continued)

151.  Treatment of English active participles.

If, in an English participial expression, the present participle
active or passive is employed, care must be taken before at¬
tempting to translate into Latin to determine the time of the
participle relative to the time of the main verb, since English
usage is very lax in this regard and the English present par¬
ticiple is very commonly used to express time that is really past.
Thus, in the sentence he retired fighting, the participle is a true
present; but in raising the flag, they charged, the raising of the
signal flag necessarily preceded the charge, and the participle
really expresses a past act. Again, in Caesar, being wounded,
retreated, the participle is also past, since the wounding preceded
the retreat. Furthermore, while in English the emphasis of a
present passive participle rests upon the state or condition
resulting from an act (in the preceding example, the condition
of being incapacitated by the wound), the Latin is compelled
to throw the emphasis upon the performance of the act from
which the condition has resulted (here the inflicting of the
wound, a past event), because there is in Latin no passive
participle of continued action or state in present time. The
English past active participle has likewise no counterpart in
Latin. Thus the lack of a present passive participle and of a
past active participle in Latin forces the recasting of English
clauses containing these participles into passive participial ex¬
pressions in past time, in order that we may be able to employ in