Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 21
Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., Ed.

20. There they beheld a strange and terrifying spectacle, for the Gauls, as was customary with the race, came armed to their assembly.¹ When the envoys, boasting of the renown and valour of the Roman People and the extent of their dominion, requested the Gauls to deny the Phoenician a passage through their lands and cities, if he should attempt to carry the war into Italy, [3??] it is said that they burst out into such peals of laughter that the magistrates and elders could scarce reduce the younger men to order [4] —so stupid and impudent a thing it seemed, to propose that the Gauls should not suffer the invaders to pass into Italy, but bring down the war on their own heads, and offer their own fields to be pillaged in place of other men's. When at last the uproar had been quelled, the Gauls made answer to the envoys that they owed the Romans no kindness nor the Carthaginians any grudge, to induce them to draw the sword in behalf of the former or against the [5] latter; on the contrary, [6??] they heard that men of their own race were being driven from the land and even out of the borders of Italy by the Roman People, and were paying tribute and suffering every other [7] humiliation. In the rest of the Gallic councils their proposals and the replies they got were to substantially the same effect, nor did they hear a single word of a truly friendly or peaceable tenor until they reached [8] Massilia.² Here they learned of all that had happened from their allies, who had made enquiries with faithful diligence. They reported that [p. 59]Hannibal had been beforehand with the Romans³ in gaining the good-will of the Gauls, but that even he would find them hardly tractable —so fierce and untamed was their nature —unless from time to time he should make use of gold, of which the race is very covetous, to secure the favour of their principal [9] men. So the envoys, having travelled through the nations of Spain and Gaul, returned to Rome, not long after the consuls had set out for their respective commands. They found the citizens all on tip-toe with expectation of the war, for the rumour persisted that the Phoenicians had already crossed the Ebro.