Laudator Temporis Acti

Juvenal 6.555-556 (tr. G.G. Ramsay):

...for now that the Delphian oracles are dumb,
man is condemned to darkness as to his future.

          quoniam Delphis oracula cessant
et genus humanum damnat caligo futuri.

Edward Courtney ad loc.:

The oracles had fallen into neglect in Augustan (Strabo 17.1.43.813 says this even of Ammon, cf. 7.7.9.327; Parke 231–2) and Neronian (Lucan 5.111 of Delphi; see F.M. Ahl Lucan (1976) 122-4) times. But in Juvenal's own day, though his contemporary the Delphic priest Plutarch wrote his De Defectu Oraculorum (dramatic date probably A.D. 83), they were beginning to revive, and regained importance under the Antonines. See RSV 3.96-7, Nilsson 2.467, H.W. Parke-D.E.W. Wormell The Delphic Oracle (1956) 1.283 sqq., RE Delphoi 2579, Orakel 853 and 861, Beaujeu 184, Flacelière Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr. 1971, 168. Juvenal seems to imply that all other oracles are a poor second to Delphi, and their activity hardly lightens the darkness caused by the silence of the Pythia.

DAMNAT damnare est damno afficere DServ. Aen. 4.699, Nonius 276; cf. Plaut. Trin. 829. On the association of this word with darkness (e.g. Ovid Met. 3.335) see E. Löfstedt Vermischte Stud. (1936) 96.

CALIGO (cf. Hor. Odes 3.29.29) takes a genitive κατὰ σύνεσιν as if it were ignoratio.