Deserted by many of their most powerful friends, Eurydikê and Ptolemy would have been forced to yield the country to Pausanias, had they not found by accident a foreign auxiliary near at hand. The Athenian admiral Iphikrates, with a squadron of moderate force, was then on the coast of Macedonia. He had been sent thither by his countrymen (369 B.C.) (soon after his partial conflict near Corinth with the retreating army of Epaminondas, on its way from Peloponnesus to Bœotia), for the purpose of generally surveying the maritime region of Macedonia and Thrace, opening negotiations with parties in the country, and laying his plans for future military operations. At the period when Alexander was slain, and when Pausanias was carrying on his invasion, Iphikrates happened to be on the Macedonian coast. He was there visited by Eurydikê with her two sons Perdikkas and Philip; the latter seemingly about thirteen or fourteen years of age, the former somewhat older. She urgently implored him to assist the family in their present emergency, reminding him that Amyntas had not only throughout his life been a faithful ally of Athens, but had also adopted him (Iphikrates) as his son, and had thus constituted him brother to the two young princes. Placing Perdikkas in his hands, and causing Philip to embrace his knees, she appealed to his generous sympathies, and invoked his aid as the only chance of restoration, or even of personal safety, to the family. Iphikrates, moved by this affecting supplication, declared in her favor, acted so vigorously against Pausanias as to expel him from Macedonia, and secured the sceptre to the family of Amyntas; under Ptolemy of Alôrus as regent for the time. This striking incident is described by the orator Æschines[538] in an oration delivered many years afterwards at Athens. The boy, who then clasped the knees of Iphikrates, lived afterwards to overthrow the independence, not of Athens alone, but of Greece generally. The Athenian general had not been sent to meddle in the disputes of succession to the Macedonian crown. Nevertheless, looking at the circumstances of the time, his interference may really have promised beneficial consequences to Athens; so that we have no right to blame him for the unforeseen ruin which it was afterwards found to occasion. [538] Æschines, Fals. Leg. c. 13, 14, p. 249, 250; Cornelius Nepos, Iphicrates, c. 3.