Buried Treasure, an Aesop Fable

Antonius Pinto was the owner of a great olive orchard. He was also the father of three strong, but lazy sons.

Antonius tended his olive trees with very little help from his sons. Every morning before the sun grew hot, he could be found on the hillside, digging about the roots, loosening the soil, or pruning the old trees and propping the young ones; or, in harvest time, picking the ripe fruit.

And every afternoon at sunset, he could be found sitting on the hillside, resting in the shade of his trees. Then Antonius would look at the fine old trees; and he would sigh to think that he was growing old and could no longer give them all the care that they needed.

"Ah, yes," he would say to himself, "if my sons would but work as I have done, the yield from this orchard would bring us a fortune."

There came a time when Antonius no longer worked among his olive trees, for he was at rest from his labors.

His three sons met to hear the reading of the will, and the words filled them with astonishment: "I bequeath to my sons my olive orchard and equal shares in the treasure that lies buried there."

The three sons stared at one another. "Treasure!" they exclaimed. "Treasure buried in the orchard! If we hire others to dig there, our treasure may be stolen from us. We ourselves must work in the orchard until we find it."

So the sons divided the orchard into three parts and began to work as they had never worked before. They turned up the soil from one end of the orchard to the other, around the roots of each tree and between the rows. But no treasure was to be found.

That year, however, the olive trees bore so much fruit that the limbs were bent to the ground. Never was such a harvest of olives seen before! The three sons sold the fruit for a good price, and each received what seemed to him a fortune.

As they were dividing the money into three shares, one of them said, "Truly, our digging has brought us a treasure. Our father was very wise."

And so each year the three sons dug in the orchard, as their father had wished; and each year the orchard yielded its treasure.

Source Ongoing Tales

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