An old woman found an empty jar which had lately been full of prime old wine and which still retained the fragrant smell of its former contents. She greedily placed it several times to her nose, and drawing it backwards and forwards said, “O most delicious! How nice must the Wine itself have been, when it leaves behind in the very vessel which contained it so sweet a perfume!”
Credits
This fable was written by Aesop, the ancient Greek storyteller believed to have lived around 620–564 BCE, whose short moral fables have been retold and treasured across cultures for over two millennia. "The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar" is thought to illustrate the folly — or perhaps the charm — of living in the memory of past pleasures rather than the reality of the present.
