ANTIPATRIS. - A Palestinian city founded on the site of ancient Aphec (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 was formerly called (Papyrus of Zenon no. 406, of 259 B.C.) Høyt (springs), because of the abundance of water in the district, and Chopharsabâ (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XIII, 9, 2 and 15, 1; XVI, 5, 2). It was later an important military station ("mutatio Antipatrita", Itinerarium Burdigalense: CSEL, 39 [1898], ed. P. Geyer, 25, 21) on the Jerusalem-Caesarea road. St. Paul, as a prisoner, halted there after the 60 km. covered from Jerusalem escorted by the foot soldiers of Claudius
Lysias (Act. 23, 31). During the Jewish war it was taken by storm, "with the tower called Aphsku", by Cestius (Flavius Josephus, Bell. Iud., II, 19, 1). In the time of St. Jerome 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 14 springs of the river el-'Aûgâ, 17 km. north of Lydda; there are found the imposing ruins of the Arab castle Abâ Futrus ("Antipatris"), where 'Abdallâh ibn 'Alî in 750 had 80 members of the Umayyads killed. The 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 Palaestina I, dependent on Caesarea; its bishop Polychronios signed the acts of the Council of Ephesus (431). In 743 A. was the scene of a vast 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, Paris 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