ANTIPATRIDE (Antipatris). — Palestinian city founded AFEC (v.) in the plain of Sharon by Herod the Great, who named it after his father Antipater (Flavius Josephus, Bell. Iud., I, 21, 9); the place had previously been called (Zenon Papyrus no. 406, of 259 B.C.) Høyt (springs), on account of the abundance of water in the region, and Chopharsabâ (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XIII, 9, 2 and 15, 1; XVI, 5, 2). It later became an important military station (“mutatio Antipatrita,” Itinerarium Burdigelense: CSEL, 39 [1898], ed. P. Geyer, 25, 21) on the Jerusalem–Caesarea road. The prisoner S. Paolo stopped there after covering the 60 km. from Jerusalem, escorted by the infantrymen of Claudius Lysias (Act. 23, 31).
During the Jewish War it was captured, “together with the tower called Aphsku,” by Cestius (Flavius Josephus, Bell. Iud., II, 19, 1). In the time of s. Girolamo it was a “semirutum oppidulum” (Epist. 108 ad Eustochium, 8).
Today A. is identified with Qal'at Râs el-'Ain (“castle of the head of the spring”), at the fourteen sources of the river el-'Aûgâ, 17 km. north of Lidda; there stand the imposing ruins of the Arab castle Abâ Futrus (“Antipatris”), where 'Abdallâh ibn 'Alî had 80 members of the Umayyad family killed in 750. Present-day Râs el-'Ain is a railway junction; it is near the intake works of the Jerusalem aqueduct.
A. was an episcopal see of Palestine I, dependent on Caesarea; its bishop Polychronios signed the acts of the Council of Ephesus (431). In 743 A. was the scene of a large-scale massacre of Christians (Theophanes Cedrenus, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, I, Leipzig 1883, p. 427).
BIBLI: A. Alt, in Zeitschr. d. deutschen Palästina-Ver., 45 (1922), pp. 220-23; L. Heidet, s. V. in DBs, I (1926), col. 305 sq.; A. E. Mader, s. V. in LThK, I, col. 502 sq.; F.-M. Abel, Mirabel et la tour d'Aphec, in Revue Biblique, 36 (1927), pp. 390-400; id., Géogr. de la Palestine, II, Parigi 1938, pp. 172, 245 sq.; J. Ory, Excavations at Râs el 'Ain, in Annual Amer. Soc. Or. Res., 5 (1936), p. 111 sq.; J. H. Iliffe, Pottery from Râs el 'Ain, ibid., pp. 113-26; M. Avi-Yonah, ibid., p. 152 sq. Antonino Romeo