videor ostendisse quālēs deī essent, I seem to have shown of what nature the gods are (ostendisse here corresponds to an Indicative, ostendī, I showed).
3. The Historical Present is sometimes regarded as a principal tense, sometimes as historical. Thus:—
Sulla suōs hortātur ut fortī animō sint, Sulla exhorts his soldiers to be stout-hearted;
Gallōs hortātur ut arma caperent, he exhorted the Gauls to take arms.
4. Conditional sentences of the 'contrary-to-fact' type are not affected by the principles for the Sequence of Tenses; as,—
honestum tāle est ut, vel sī ignōrārent id hominēs, suā tamen pulchritūdine laudabīle esset, virtue is such a thing that even if men were ignorant of it, it would still be worthy of praise for its own loveliness.
5. In conditional sentences of the 'contrary-to-fact' type the Imperfect Subjunctive is usually treated as an Historical tense; as,—
sī sōlōs eōs dīcerēs miserōs, quibus moriendum esset, nēminem tū quidem eōrum quī vīverent exciperēs, if you called only those wretched who must die, you would except no one of those who live.
6. In clauses of Result and some others, the Perfect Subjunctive is sometimes used as an historical tense. Thus:—
rēx tantum mōtus est, ut Tissaphernem hostem jūdicārit, the king was so much moved that he adjudged Tissaphernes an enemy.
This construction is rare in Cicero, but frequent in Nepos and subsequent historians. The Perfect Subjunctive in this use represents a result simply as a fact without reference to the continuance of the act, and therefore corresponds to an Historical Perfect Indicative of direct statement. Thus, jūdicārit in the above example corresponds to adjūdicāvit, he adjudged. To denote a result as something continuous, all writers use the Imperfect Subjunctive after historical tenses.