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The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe, and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small portion of France. It is the westernmost of the three southern European peninsulas—the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas. It is bordered on the southeast and east by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the north, west and southwest by the Atlantic Ocean. The Pyrenees form the northeast edge of the peninsula, separating it from the rest of Europe. In the south, it approaches the northern coast of Africa. It is the second-largest peninsula in Europe, with an area of 582,860&_160;square kilometres (225,040&_160;sq&_160;mi). The English word Iberia was adapted from the use of the Ancient Greek word ?ß???a (Ibería) by the Greek geographers under the Roman Empire to mean what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula.[1] The name was not then used to mean a single political country or a population speaking a single language.[2] Strabo's Iberia was delineated from Keltike by the Pyrenees and included the entire land mass south (he mistakenly said west) of there. The Greeks discovered Iberia by voyaging westward. Hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term around 500 BC.[3] Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that "it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with ... Iberia."[4] According to Strabo[5] prior historians used Iberia to mean the country "this side of the ?ß???? (Iberos)" as far north as the Rhone river in France but currently they set the Pyrenees as the limit. Polybius respects that limit[6] but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, with the Atlantic side having no name. Elsewhere[7] he says that Saguntum is "on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia." Concerning the original population that lived in Iberia Strabo makes a statement that has led many to tag the original Iberia as Basque.[8] He refers to the Carretanians as people "of the Iberian stock" living in the Pyrenees, who are to be distinguished from either Celts or Celtiberians.
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