1When this sudden uprising was reported at Rome, and the senators learned that a Gallic war had been added to the Carthaginian one as well, they order the praetor Gaius Atilius to bring help to Manlius with one Roman legion and five thousand allies enlisted by the consul in a new levy; 2he reached Tannetum without any fighting — for the enemy had withdrawn in fear. 3And Publius Cornelius, having enrolled a new legion in place of the one which had been sent with the praetor, set out from the city with sixty warships, sailed along the coast of Etruria and of the Ligurians and then of the Salluvian mountains, reached Massilia and pitches camp at the nearest mouth of the Rhône — for the river flows down into the sea divided into several channels — scarcely yet believing that Hannibal had crossed the Pyrenees.
5When he learned that Hannibal was also considering the crossing of the Rhône, uncertain where he should meet him, and with his soldiers not yet sufficiently recovered from the tossing of the sea, he sends ahead meanwhile three hundred picked cavalry with Massiliot guides and Gaulish auxiliaries to reconnoitre everything and observe the enemy from a safe distance. 6Hannibal, having pacified the others by fear or by payment, had now reached the territory of the Volcae, a powerful nation. 6They live on both banks of the Rhône; 6but doubting that the Carthaginian could be kept out of the land on the nearer side, so as to have the river as a defence, they had taken almost all their people across the Rhône and were holding the farther bank of the river with arms.
7Hannibal wins over with gifts the other dwellers by the river, and even those of the Volcae themselves whom their homes had kept back, to gather and build boats from every side, and at the same time they themselves were eager for the army to be taken across and their region relieved as soon as possible from the pressure of so great a crowd of men. 8And so a huge number of ships was collected, and of boats roughly made for local use; 8and the Gauls, making a start, were hollowing out other new ones from single trees, and then the soldiers themselves too, induced both by the abundance of timber and by the ease of the work, were hastily making shapeless hulls in which to carry themselves and their belongings across, caring for nothing as long as they could float on the water and carry loads.