What is "antipater"

Several notable persons of the ancient world were named Antipater, Antipatros (from , literally meaning "like the father"):

Antipater (; ; c. 397 BC – 319 BC) was a Macedonian general and a supporter of kings Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great. In 320 BC, he became regent of all of Alexander's Empire.

Antipater II (; c. 46 – 4 BC) was Herod the Great's first-born son, his only child by his first wife Doris. He was named after his paternal grandfather Antipater the Idumaean. He and his mother were exiled after Herod divorced her between 43 BC and 40 BC to marry Mariamne I. However, he was recalled following Mariamne's fall in 29 BC and in 13 BC Herod made him his first heir in his will. He retained this position even when Alexandros and Aristobulos (Herod's sons by Mariamne) rose in the royal succession in 12 BC, and even became exclusive successor to the throne after their execution in 7 BC (with Herod II in second place).

However, in 5 BC Antipater was brought before Publius Quinctilius Varus, then Roman governor of Syria, charged with the intended murder of his father Herod. Antipater was found guilty by Varus; however, due to Antipater's high rank, it was necessary for Caesar Augustus to approve of the recommended sentence of death. After the guilty verdict, Antipater's position as exclusive successor was removed and granted to Herod Antipas. Once the sentence had approval from Augustus in 4 BC, Antipater was then executed, and Archelaus (from the marriage with Malthace) was made heir in his father's will as king over Herod's entire kingdom (with Antipas and Philip as Tetrarchs over certain territories).

We know two of Antipater's wives through the writings of Josephus. First was his niece Mariamne III, daughter of Aristobulus IV. The second was a high-ranking Hasmonean princess whose first name is lost to history. She was the daughter of Antigonus the Hasmonean, the last Hasmonean king who also served as high priest. This wife of Antipater was also a first cousin of Mariamne I, renowned royal wife of Herod the Great. Josephus records that she was at the palace with Doris, Antipater's mother, in support of her husband during his trial before Varus in 5 BC.

Antipater was a Greek physician and author of a work titled "On the Soul", of which the second book is quoted by the Scholiast on Homer, in which he said that the soul increased, diminished, and at last perished with the body; and which may very possibly be the work quoted by Diogenes Laertius, and commonly attributed to Antipater of Tarsus.

If he is the physician who is said by Galen to have belonged to the Methodic school, he must have lived in or after the 1st century BC; and this date will agree very well with the fact of his being quoted by Andromachus, Scribonius Largus, and Caelius Aurelianus. His prescriptions are frequently quoted with approbation by Galen and Aetius, and the second book of his "Epistles" is mentioned by Caelius Aurelianus.

Antipater was a Greek physician and contemporary of Galen at Rome in the 2nd century, who gives an account of his death and the morbid symptoms that preceded it.

Antipater was in ancient Greece a writer on the interpretation of dreams (Oneirocritica), mentioned by fellow writer on dreams Artemidorus in his Oneirocritica. His works are now lost, and the only reference to his work is in Artemidorus, who mentions Antipater's thoughts on a dream where the dreamer had sexual intercourse with a piece of iron.

Antipater was an astrologer or mathematician of ancient Greece of uncertain date. He wrote a work upon genethlialogia, in which he endeavored to explain man's fate, not from the circumstances under which he was born, but from those under which he had been conceived. Nothing further is known of his life.