Till Alexander with his army invaded Asia, it remained in tranquillity, but in 331 B.C. a great battle there made it a Greek town.
However, it was but eighty years after that Arsaces I., the liberator and founder of the great Parthian empire, conquered Adiabene, and subsequently the sanctity of Arbela won for it the distinction of becoming the burial-place of the Arsacid kings of Parthia. The Greek and later Syrian kings of the Alexandrian Succession had, however, sufficient hold over the province to make it necessary for the Parthians to fight them for it; and not till about 136 B.C., did Mithridates, a Parthian monarch, overcome the last of them and possess the country then called Adiabene, ancient Assyria proper. The province became, under Parthian rule, governed by a petty king or “vitaxa.”
Armenia in 83 B.C., under Tigran I., the ruling prince, who for some time enjoyed considerable power, possessed itself of Arbela and Adiabene, but was driven out a decade after he entered it, by the Romans and Parthians acting in concert against this insolent upstart. Under the Roman and Roman-Parthian sway the province of Adiabene—always coveted for its richness—attained prominence, for the Romans desired absolutely to possess it and its capital.
So in A.D. 49, Meherdates, a Parthian prince in exile at Rome, being invited by the Parthians to expel the tyrannical Godarz, proceeded from Nineveh to Arbela to meet the usurper, encouraged by the allegiance of Izates, king of Adiabene. He met Godarz near Arbela, and after a long battle, decided chiefly by the desertion of Izates and other fickle friends, he was defeated.
Thirteen years later, A.D. 62, Tigran V., a king of Armenia appointed by the Emperor Nero, attracted by the richness of Adiabene, and by the absence of the Parthian king Vologases I., attempted its invasion. He harassed the unfortunate people so much, that they sent to Vologases complaining, and threatening to earn peace for themselves by giving allegiance to Rome. The Parthian king responded promptly enough, declared war upon Armenia and the Romans, and appointed Manubaz, king of Adiabene, to command of an army, which expelled Tigran and invaded his country.
From this time Adiabene became a bone of contention till the Persians rose up, and smote Parthian and Roman alike, to found once more an Aryan empire.
In A.D. 115 the Emperor Trajan occupied the province, which resisted bravely; but his successor Hadrian, unable to hold it, relinquished it two years later. Severus, one of the greatest of the later Romans, fired by ambition and a desire to chastise the Adiabenians, who had given him great trouble by helping other states to resist him, invaded the country, but Vologases, in A.D. 196, expelled him. Severus, however, made a final attempt a year or two later, and this time added Adiabene to the Roman Empire, establishing his right to the title Adiabenisus, which he had prematurely assumed in A.D. 193.
Arbela under the Roman rule suffered a scandalous and sacrilegious outrage by one Caracullus, who, returning from an expedition against Babylon in A.D. 216, broke into and violated the Parthian royal burying-place, dragged out the bodies, and cast them away.
It had but ten years longer to exist under the foreign tyrant, for Artaxerxes (Ardashir) the Persian, of the new Sasanian dynasty, conquered it, and expelled both Roman and Parthian from that and many other lands.
Under the favourable rule of this enlightened and civilised monarchy the Christians made great progress, obtaining protection and encouragement from the Persian Zoroastrian monarchs, and Adiabene was in A.D. 500 the see of a Chaldean bishopric, including Mosul and Arbela, where the shrine of Ishtar, after having exacted worship for a couple of thousand years, fell into a speedy disrepute.