Rule 87: Tenses in Indirect Statement 

As we continue exploring indirect speech in Latin, it's important to think about the tense of the verb / infinitive in an indirect statement. Infinitives have only three tenses, and we need to think about these tenses as reflecting relative rather than absolute time. So a present infinitive shows an action happening at the same time as the head verb, a perfect infinitive an action has is already complete with the head verb occurs, and a future infinitive an action that has yet to happen.