videbo quid feceris, I shall see what you have done.

    videro quid feceris, I shall have seen what you have done.

HISTORICAL SEQUENCE,—­

    videbam quid faceres, I saw what you were doing.

    vidi quid faceres, I saw what you were doing.

    videram quid faceres, I had seen what you were doing.

    videbam quid fecisses, I saw what you had done.

    vidi quid fecisses, I saw what you had done.

    videram quid fecisses, I had seen what you had done.

3.  The Present and Imperfect Subjunctive denote incomplete action, the Perfect and Pluperfect completed action, exactly as in the Indicative.

Peculiarities of Sequence.

268. 1.  The Perfect Indicative is usually an historical tense (even when translated in English as a Present Perfect), and so is followed by the Imperfect and Pluperfect Subjunctive; as,—­

    demonstravi quare ad causam accederem, I have shown why I took the
    case (lit. I showed why, etc.).

2.  A dependent Perfect Infinitive is treated as an historical tense wherever, if resolved into an equivalent Indicative, it would be historical; as,—­

    videor ostendisse quales dei essent, I seem to have shown of what
    nature the gods are (ostendisse here corresponds to an Indicative,
    ostendi, I showed).

3.  The Historical Present is sometimes regarded as a principal tense, sometimes as historical.  Thus:—­

    Sulla suos hortatur ut forti animo sint, Sulla exhorts his soldiers to
    be stout-hearted;

    Gallos hortatur 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 tale est ut, vel si ignorarent id homines, sua tamen pulchritudine laudabile 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,—­

    si solos eos diceres miseros, quibus moriendum esset, neminem tu quidem
    eorum qui viverent exciperes, 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:—­

    rex tantum motus est, ut Tissaphernem hostem judicarit, 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, judicarit in the above example corresponds to adjudicavit, he adjudged.  To denote a result as something continuous, all writers use the Imperfect Subjunctive after historical tenses.