I don’t know much Latin myself, nevertheless and according to logic, the action of fearing in the last example, "veritus", is happening in the past, as the implicit logical relation of cause and effect is suggesting it between the main clause and the participial subordinate. At least that’s how it would be explained in French, for the same sentence: « Craignant un piège, il avait gardé son armée dans le camp ». Brilliant content though. Thank you for sharing
Perhaps one should better speak of the aspect of participles (cf. the aspectual opposition "in progress" / "completed") rather than of the relative "time" (?) of participles. The future participle can be regarded as a modalized non-finite form of the verb.
Yes, but the term "time" is commonly used in grammars, and so can often be a good starting point to aspect. But aspect itself is a complicated topic. I think the failure is in the terms we use for the participles, but an evil we have to contend with.
