Between 250 and 245 B.C. the fortunes of Gonatas were at a low ebb. He evidently bent before the storm, unable to confront Alexander and Aratus in Greece and the admirals of Philadelphus in the Ægean. Relief came to him from an unexpected source--the renewal of the war between Egypt and Asia, when, on the death of Antiochus II, his sister-wife Laodice took up arms against the Egyptian queen and her babe on behalf of her son Seleucus Callinicus. For, helped by the untimely death of Philadelphus, and despite the intervention of the Egyptian fleet, she succeeded in compassing the death of her rivals;[127] whereupon the new Ptolemy, Euergetes, took the field in person and made a general attack by land and sea upon her and her adherents. This tragic incident was one of the few pieces of good luck experienced by Antigonus. Another was the premature death of his nephew Alexander (246 B.C.), followed as it was by the Ætolian conquest of Boeotia, and the decision of Nicæa, Alexander's widow, to surrender Corinth and the rest of her kingdom to Macedon, the arrangement being that she was to take the place of the barren and discredited Stratonice as wife of the crown prince Demetrius. In 245-244 B.C. the balance in Asia inclined sharply in favor of Laodice, and at the same time Antigonus, aided by his patron god Pan, recovered Delos and the Islands. Having thus regained what the rebellion of Alexander had cost him, and having settled his account with Egypt, Antigonus had now to deal with Aratus of Sicyon alone. The Achæan was too quick for him, however. By a night attack, in time of peace, he treacherously seized Corinth (243 B.C.), and at once added it, together with Megara, Epidaurus, and Troezen, to the Achæan league. The response of Antigonus to this audacious coup was to form a pact with his old friends the Ætolians to divide Achæan territory between them; whereupon, as the only escape from so great a peril, Aratus put the responsibility where the responsibility really belonged, by having Ptolemy Euergetes elected general of the Achæan league on land and sea for 242 B.C. Euergetes brought the Laodicean War to a point where an advantageous peace was possible by a victory over Callinicus in this critical year; but his attempt to help Aratus, who tried to "liberate" Athens while his "commander" engaged Gonatas in the Ægean, was frustrated by the defeat sustained by his admiral Sophron at the hands of the veteran Antigonus off the island of Andros. Macedon still held the Ægean. In the mean time its allies the Ætolians, already dangerously strengthened by the occupation of Boeotia, had worsted Olympias, the queen regent of Epirus, in several engagements, and were on the point of incorporating all of Acarnania in their league. Antigonus thought the time had come to call a halt. Euergetes and Callinicus were of the same mind. Accordingly, the long war was concluded in 242-241 B.C. by a general peace arranged on the basis of _uti possidetis_.