CALCIDE. - Centre of a kingdom already existing in the fourteenth century B.C. in upper Syria, as appears from the Tell Amarna letters. In the time of Saul and David, moreover, it was an Aramaean kingdom west of Damascus, in the region of Coelesyria, bearing the name Sôbhâh (I Sam. 14, 47; II Sam. 8, 3 ff.), against whose king David waged war and prevailed.
This Sôbhâh is identified with the C. of the Greeks, the name being explained as an appellative derived from the copper deposits in this region. It seems to correspond to the present-day locality of 'Anğar, situated 15 km west of Zebedani, in Coelesyria. In the years 85–40 B.C., C. was the capital of a State under a certain Ptolemy, son of Mennaios. His son and successor, Lisania I, called “king of the Itureans” by Dio Cassius, extended his kingdom from the Mediterranean as far as Damascus; he was killed by the triumvir Antony, at Cleopatra’s instigation, in 36, in order to annex Coelesyria to Egypt. But the Romans gave the kingdom to Zenodorus, and in 20 to Herod the Great. The emperor Claudius gave the kingdom of C. to Herod, brother of Agrippa I, in A.D. 41, and after his death, in 49, to Agrippa II, but only for four years; Claudius then resumed II.