ANTIPATRIDE (Antipatriis). — A Palestinian city founded AFEC (v.) in the plain of Sharon by Herod the Great, who named it after his father Antipater (Flavius Josephus, Bell. Jud., I, 21, 9); the place was formerly called (Zenon Papyrus no. 406, from 259 BC) Πηγαί (springs), on account of the abundance of water in the area, and Chapharsabá (Flavius Josephus, Antig. Jud., XIII, 9, 2 and 15, 1; XVI, 5, 2). It later became an important military station (mutatio Antipatrida, Itinerarium Burdigalense: CSEL, 39 [1898], ed. P. Geyer, 25, 21) on the Jerusalem-Caesarea road. St. Paul, as a prisoner, stopped there after covering 60 km from Jerusalem, escorted by the soldiers of Claudius Lysias (Acts 23:31). During the Jewish War it was captured, along with the tower called Aphseku, by Cestius (Flavius Josephus, Bell. Jud., II, 19, 1). In the time of St. Jerome it was a “deserted little town” (Epist. 108 ad Eustochium, 8).
Today A. is identified with Qal'at Rás el-Ain (“castle of the head of the spring”), at the 14 springs of the Nahr el-Augá river, 17 km north of Lydda; there are imposing ruins of the Arab castle Abú Futrus (= Antipatriis?), where in 750 ‘Abdallāh ibn ‘Alī had 80 members of the Umayyad dynasty put to death. Modern Rás el-Ain is a railway junction; it is near the intake works of the Jerusalem aqueduct.
A. was the seat of a bishopric in Palaestina Prima, dependent on Caesarea; its bishop Polychronius signed the acts of the Council of Ephesus (431). In 743 A. was the scene of a widespread massacre of Christians (Theophanes Cerameus, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, I, Leipzig 1883, p. 427).