ANTIPATRIS (an-tip'a-tris), (Gr. 'A ler irrarplr, an-tikat-reece'), a city built by Herod the Great on the site of a former place called Caphar-saba (Joseph. Antiq. 1).
Caphar-saba was 120 stadia from Joppa ; and be tween the two places Alexander Balas drew a trench, with a wall and wooden towers, as a de fense against the approach of Antiochus (Antiq. xiii:15, I; De Bell. Jud. i:4, 7). Antipatris also lay between Caesarea and Lydda, its distance from the former place being twenty-six Roman miles (Him Hieros. p. 600). These circumstances indi cate that Antipatris was in the midst of a plain, and not at Arsuf, where the Crusaders supposed they had found it (Roland, Palcest. pp. 569, 570). On the road from Ramlah to Nazareth. north of Ras-el Ain, Prokeseh (Reise ins Heilige Wien, 1831) came to a place called Kaffr Saba ; and the position which Brighaus assigns to this town in his map is almost in exact agreement with the position assigned to Antipatris in the Pin. Hieros. Perceiving this, Professor Raumer (Pal as!. pp. 462) happily conjectured that this Kaffr Saba was no other than the reproduced name of Caphar-saba, wl.ich, as in many other instances, has again supplanted the foreign arhi trary and later name of Antipatris. This con jecture has been supported by Professor Robin son, who gives Kefr Saba as the name of the vil lage in question (Researches, iii :46-48). Wilson and Conder place it at Kala'at Ras el'Ain, ruins between Lydda and Caesarea, thirty miles south east of the latter and eleven miles northeast of Joppa. The old Roman road from Jerusalem runs to this place, and thence to Caesarea. "One of the finest springs in the country is near." It did not seem probable to Wilson and Conder that any large town like Antipatris had been at Kefr Saba.
St. Paul was brought from Jerusalem to Anti patris by night, on his route to C:i.esarea (Acts ANTONIA. (fem. of Antonius), a fortress in Jerusalem on the north side of the area of the temple, often mentioned by Josephus in his account of the later wars of the Jews.
It was originally built by the Maccabees, under the name of Bans, and was afterwards rebuilt with great strength and splendor by the first Herod. In a more particular description, Josephus states (De Bell. Jud. v:5, S) that the fortress stood upon a rock or hill fifty cubits high, at the northwest corner of the temple area, above which its wall rose to the height of 40 cubits. Within it had the extent and appearance of a palace, being divided into apartments of every kind, with gal leries and baths, and broad halls or barracks for soldiers ; so that, as having everything necessary within itself, it seemed a city, while in magnifi cence it resembled a palace. At each of the four corners was a tower. Three of these were fifty cubits high, but the fourth, at the southeast cor ner, was seventy cubits high, and overlooked the whole temple with its courts. The fortress com municated with the northern and western porti coes of the temple area, and had flights of stairs descending into both, by which the garrison could at any time enter the courts of the temple and pre vent tumults. On the north it was separated from the hill Bezetha by a deep trench, lest it should be approachable from that quarter, and the depth of the trench added much to the apparent eleva tion of the towers (De Bell. Jud. v:4, 2).
This fortress is called parembola, soldiers' bar racks, in the New Testament (Acts xxi :34, 37). The Romans generally kept a garrison in it, and from hence it was that the tribune ran with his soldiers to rescue Paul out of the hands of the Jews, who bad seized him in the temple and de signed to kill him (Acts xxi :31, 32).
Professor Robinson (Researches, i :422), con ceives that the deep and otherwise inexplicable ex cavation called 'the pool of Bethesda' was part of the trench below the north wall of this fortress; in which case, as he remarks, its extent must have been much more considerable than has usually been supposed.