The association was so well known it was hardly necessary to state. For example, Iberia was the country "this side of the Iberus" in Strabo. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called "the whole of the peninsula" Hiberia because of the Hiberus River.

The river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BCE between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian,