(ii.) The non-thematic conjugation is almost wholly lost, surviving only in a few forms of very common use, est, “is”; ēst, “eats”; volt, “wills,” &c.
(iii.) The complete fusion of the aorist and perfect forms, and in the same tense the fusion of active and middle endings; thus tutudī, earlier *tutudai, is a true middle perfect; dīxī is an s aorist with the same ending attached; dīxit is an aorist active; tutudisti is a conflation of perfect and aorist with a middle personal ending.
(iv.) The development of perfects in -uī and -vī, derived partly from true perfects of roots ending in v or u, e.g. mōvī ruī. For the origin of monuī see Exon, Hermathena (1901), xi. 396 sq.
(v.) The complete fusion of conjunctive and optative into a single mood, the subjunctive; regam, &c., are conjunctive forms, whereas rexerim, rexissem are certainly and regerem most probably optative; the origin of amem and the like is still doubtful. Notice, however, that true conjunctive forms were often used as futures, regēs, reget, &c., and also the simple thematic conjunctive in forms like erō, rexerō, &c.
(vi.) The development of the future in -bo and imperfect in -bam by compounding some form of the verb, possibly the Present Participle with forms from the root of fuī, *amans-fuo becoming amabō, *amans-fṷām becoming amābam at a very early period of Latin; see F. Skutsch, Atti d. Congresso Storico Intern. (1903), vol. ii. p. 191.
(vii.) We have already noticed the rise of the passive in -r (§ 5 (d)). Observe, however, that several middle forms have been pressed into the service, partly because the -r- in them which had come from -s- seemed to give them a passive colour (legere = Gr. λέγε(σ)ο, Attic λέγου). The interesting forms in -minī are a confusion of two distinct inflexions, namely, an old infinitive in -menai, used for the imperative, and the participial -menoi, masculine, -menai, feminine, used with the verb “to be” in place of the ordinary inflexions. Since these forms had all come to have the same shape, through phonetic change, their meanings were fused; the imperative forms being restricted to the plural, and the participial forms being restricted to the second person.
31. Past Participle Passive.—Next should be mentioned the great development in the use of the participle in -tos (factus, fusus, &c.). This participle was taken with sum to form the perfect tenses of the passive, in which, thanks partly to the fusion of perfect and aorist active, a past aorist sense was also evolved. This reacted on the participle itself giving it a prevailingly past colour, but its originally timeless use survives in many places, e.g. in the participle ratus, which has as a rule no past sense, and more definitely still in such passages as Vergil, Georg. i. 206 (vectis), Aen. vi. 22 (ductis), both of which passages demand a present sense. It is to be noticed also that in the earliest Latin, as in Greek and Sanskrit, the passive meaning, though the commonest, is not universal. Many traces of this survive in classical Latin, of which the chief are
1. The active meaning of deponent participles, in spite of the fact that some of them (e.g. adeptus, ēmēnsus, expertus) have also a passive sense, and
2. The familiar use of these participles by the Augustan poets with an accusative attached (galeam indutus, traiectus lora). Here no doubt the use of the Greek middle influenced the Latin poets, but no doubt they thought also that they were reviving an old Latin idiom.
32. Future Participle.—Finally may be mentioned together (a) the development of the future participle active (in -ūrus, never so freely used as the other participles, being rare in the ablative absolute even in Tacitus) from an old infinitive in -ūrum (“scio inimicos meos hoc dicturum,” C. Gracchus (and others) apud Gell. 1. 7, and Priscian ix. 864 (p. 475 Keil), which arose from combining the dative or locative of the verbal noun in -tu with an old infinitive esom “esse” which survives in Oscan, *dictu esom becoming dicturum. This was discovered by J. P. Postgate (Class. Review, v. 301, and Idg. Forschungen iv. 252). (b) From the same infinitival accusative with the post-position -dō, meaning “to,” “for,” “in” (cf. quandō for *quam-do, and Eng. to, Germ, zu) was formed the so-called gerund agen-dō, “for doing,” “in doing,” which was taken for a Case, and so gave rise to the accusative and genitive in -dum and -dī. The form in -dō still lives in Italian as an indeclinable present participle. The modal and purposive meanings of -dō appear in the uses of the gerund.