Past participle recognition

The perfect passive participle is a verb form acting as an adjective, describing something that has been done: "loved", "seen", "captured", "sent". It turns up constantly in inscriptions and narrative, and recognizing it lets you read phrases like "the captured city" or "the words having been spoken" without confusion.

The tell-tale endings are -tus and -sus (feminine -ta / -sa, neuter -tum / -sum):

Verb	Participle	Meaning
amo (love)	amatus	loved, having been loved
video (see)	visus	seen
capio (capture)	captus	captured
mitto (send)	missus	sent

Because it is an adjective, it agrees with its noun in gender, number, and case: urbs capta (the captured city), verba dicta (the words spoken).

Examples:

• Urbs capta est. = The city has been captured.
• Epistula scripta in mensa iacet. = The written letter lies on the table.
• Puer a magistro laudatus est. = The boy was praised by the teacher.

For English speakers: English has an -ed form that does the same double duty ("a loved child", "the child was loved"), so the concept transfers well. The trap is the ending. A form in -tus / -sus is passive ("having been done to"), whereas an active past ("having done") uses a different construction. So captus means "captured", not "having captured". When you see a word ending in -tus, -ta, -tum (or -sus, -sa, -sum) sitting near a noun it matches, read it as "the ...ed noun".