ANTIPATER (398?-319 B.c.), Macedonian general, and regent of Macedonia during Alexander's Eastern expedition (334 323). He had previously (346) been sent by Philip as ambassa dor to Athens and negotiated peace after the battle of Chaeroneia About 332, while he was dealing with a rebellion in Thrace, the Spartan king Agis (q.v.) rose against Macedonia. Having settled affairs in Thrace as well as he could, Antipater hastened south and, near Megalopolis (331), gained a complete victory over the insurgents (Diodorus xvii. 62). His regency was troubled by the ambition of Olympias, mother of Alexander, and he was nominally superseded by Craterus. But on the death of Alexander, in 323, he was, by the first partition of the empire, left in command of Macedonia, and in the Lamian War at the battle of Crannon (322) crushed the Greeks, who had attempted to re-assert their independence. Later in the same year, hearing that Perdiccas contemplated making himself sole master of the empire, Antipater and Craterus prepared for war against him and allied themselves with Ptolemy, the governor of Egypt. Antipater crossed to Asia in 321, and while still in Syria he heard that Perdiccas had been murdered by his own soldiers. Craterus fell in battle against Eumenes (Diodorus xviii. 25-39). Antipater, then sole regent, having quelled a mutiny of his troops and commissioned Antigonus to continue the war against Eumenes, returned to Macedonia, where he arrived in 32o (Justin xiii. 6) . In 319 he fell ill and, passing over his son Cassander, appointed the aged Polyperchon regent, a measure which gave rise to much confusion and ill feeling (Diodorus xvii., xviii.) .
See Cambridge Ancient History vol. vi., chaps. xiv. and xv., with bibliographies there given.