A past context usually (but not always) has the imperfect subjunctive: (Caesar) 'he ordered the army not to start fighting without his permission' Change of person Another of the characteristics of indirect speech is that the pronouns and persons of the verb change in accordance to the viewpoint of the new speaker. Thus in the following example, the original thought was 'he is very grateful to you'. In indirect speech this becomes: (Cicero) 'he wrote to me that you were very grateful to me' Very often the viewpoint changes to the 3rd person, in which case the reflexive pronoun (or ) 'himself, herself, themselves' and its various derivatives etc. are used in order to refer to the speaker of the reported words: (Nepos) 'he ordered this man to follow him' (Nepos) 'he replied that he did not know Aristides personally' When the subject of the verb of speaking is feminine or plural, will be translated as 'she' or 'they': (Gellius) 'his wife said that she wished to bathe in the men's baths' (Pliny the Younger) 'they said they had been cheated' The reflexive pronoun can sometimes be used to refer to the speaker even when the speaker is not strictly the grammatical subject of the sentence, as in this example: (Cicero) 'I am being invited by Caesar to be one of his deputy commanders' A third person which is not the subject is referred to by or 'him, that person'. To avoid ambiguity in English, it is often necessary to insert a name: (Cicero) 'he (Africanus) said that he knew that Licinius had been lying when he took the oath' However, and can be ambiguous, since in addition to referring to the speaker, they can also refer reflexively to the subject of the nearest verb. Thus in these two indirect questions, the word refers to Caesar (the subject of ) but 'his' refers to the speaker, Ariovistus: (Caesar) 'what did Caesar want for himself? why was he entering Ariovistus's territory?' Similarly, in the following example, and refer to the Roman ambassadors (the subject of ), while refers to the king (the subject of ): (Nepos) 'they sent ambassadors to Bithynia, who were to request the king that he should not keep their greatest enemy with him, but hand him over to them' Indirect statements Constructions with the infinitive Verbs of speaking Often in historical writing there is no verb of