 It lay between Caesarea Maritima and Lydda, on the great Roman road from Caesarea to Jerusalem, and figures prominently in Roman-era history.Today, the nearby river bears the town's old namesake in the Arabic tongue ().According to Josephus, Antipatris was built on the site of an older town that was formerly called "Chabarzaba" (), a place so-named in classical Jewish literature and in the Mosaic of Rehob.