At the death of Alexander, the Athenians considered it a fit opportunity to emancipate themselves from the ascendancy of Macedon; but without success. Demosthenes, one of the most eminent patriots and orators of Athens, on this occasion, to avoid being assassinated by order of Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy, killed himself by swallowing poison; and his compatriot Phocion was shortly afterwards put to death by his own countrymen, the Athenians, in a mad outbreak of popular fury. Greece cannot be said to have produced one great man after Phocion; and this deficiency of wise and able leaders was doubtless one chief cause of the insignificance into which the various states, great and small, sunk after this epoch. The ancient history of Greece, as an independent country, now draws to a close. Achaia, hitherto a small, unimportant state, having begun to make some pretensions to political consequence, excited the enmity of Sparta, and was compelled to seek the protection of Philip, the ruling prince of Macedon. Philip took the field against the Spartans, and their allies the Ætolians, and was in a fair way of subjecting all Greece, by arms and influence, when he ventured on the fatal step of commencing hostilities against the Romans. This measure consummated the ruin of Greece, as well as that of Macedon. The Romans warred with Philip till the end of his life (175 B. C.), and continued the contest with his son Perseus, whom they utterly defeated, and with whom ended the line of the kings of Macedon. In a few years the once illustrious and free republics of Greece were converted into a Roman province, under the name of Achaia (146 B. C.). Thus terminates the fourth and last period of Greek history, during which flourished several eminent writers and philosophers, among whom may be numbered Theocritus, a pastoral poet; Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Herodian, historians; Demosthenes, an orator; and Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, philosophers; also Zeuxis, Timanthes, Pamphilus, Nicias, Appelles, and Eupompus, painters; and Praxiteles, Polycletus, Camachus, Naucides, and Lysippus, sculptors.