In Latin--almost never in English because our version is so much more complicated, but pretty much every other sentence in Latin--there is a certain construction known as the perfect passive participle. It can best be translated as "having been [verb]ed." Despite its unpopularity in English, I think in the perfect passive participle a lot. This is partly because I speak Latin, and partly because I have an automatic predisposition to like anything unpopular, but also partly because I think of it as an inspiring way to use words. It's a way to describe the past in a way that necessarily links it to some later event.
Having been bullied for many years, I resolved never to let anyone treat my friends that way.
It sounds weak in English, as the passive often does, but to me that only makes it a better way to convey the meaning of that sentence. Even on the obscure, "meta" level of the language I used, it demonstrates passing from weakness to strength.
It's simpler in Latin, where a perfect passive participle is only one word long. Though it won't be a perfectly literal translation, it is quite possible to translate it as an adjective without losing meaning. If you are reading this blog and have seen the title plastered all over it, or if you have seen the name under which I am writing this, you have seen this construction. Amata means "having been loved," or simply "beloved." Therefore, in the rather unusual conventions used by the first Latin textbook I ever owned:
iuliana amata iam amat.
There are two ways to translate that: either as "Now Iuliana Amata loves," or as "Having been loved, Iuliana now loves."
