Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 23
Frank Gardener Moore, Professor Emeritus in Columbia University, Ed.

13. As Mago said he did not know, “Nothing is easier to know,” said Hanno. “Have the Romans sent any emissaries to Hannibal suing for peace? Has it been reported to you that even any mention of peace has been made at Rome?” [2] The answer to this also being negative, “Therefore,” he said, “we have the war intact, as truly as we had on the day on which Hannibal crossed into Italy. [3] How often victory shifted in the previous Punic War¹ very many of us are alive to remember. Never have our fortunes seemed more favourable on land and sea than they were before the consulship of Gaius Lutatius and Aulus Postumius. But in the consulship of Lutatius and Postumius we were utterly defeated off the Aegates Islands.² [4] And if now also-may the gods avert the omen! —fortune shall shift to any extent, do you hope that at the time of our defeat we shall have a peace which no one gives us now when we are victorious? [5] For myself, if some one is about to bring up the question either of offering peace to the enemy or of accepting it, I know what opinion to express. But if you are raising the question of Mago's demands, I do not think it to the [p. 43]point to send those things to victors, and I think it³ much less necessary to send them to men who are deluding us with a hope unfounded and empty.”

[6] Not many were moved by Hanno's speech. For the feud with the Barca family made his advice less weighty, and then minds filled with the joy of the moment would not listen to anything which made their rejoicing less well-founded. And they thought that, if they were willing to add a little to their efforts, the war would soon be finished. [7] Accordingly the senate with great unanimity decreed that four thousand Numidians should be sent to Hannibal as a reinforcement;⁴ also forty elephants and . . . silver talents. [8] And . . . was sent in advance to Spain with Mago,⁵ for the purpose of hiring twenty thousand infantry and four thousand horse, to reinforce the armies that were in Italy and those in Spain.