115. ORA. Ehwald (KB 65) read ARA (B), citing Dessau ILS 154 14-15 'ara(m) numini Augusto pecunia nostra faciendam curauimus; ludos / ex idibus Augustis diebus sex p(ecunia) n(ostra) faciendos curauimus'; but the ara and ludi are clearly separate items in the inscription, which does not support the phrasing ara natalem ludis celebrare.
Even with ora, 115-16 read rather oddly: the notion of an individual conducting ludi is strange, and the singular dei seems rather vague after the collective his of 111. If the distich is excised (as Professor R. J. Tarrant suggests) 113-14 round out the paragraph that began with 105 (note the correspondence of uidet hospita terra in 105 with testis Pontica terra in 114), and 117 introduces hospites as a second class of witnesses.
118. LONGA. Not 'distant' (Wheeler) but 'long'; compare Met XIII 407 'longus in angustum qua clauditur Hellespontus'. Longus meaning 'distant' is extremely rare: OLD longus 6 cites only Silius VI 628 'remeans longis ... oris' and ps-Quintilian Decl 320 6 'longas terras ... peragraui' (Lewis and Short add Justinus 18 1 'longa a domo militia'). The normal Latin words for 'distant' were longinquus and longe (ancestor of French loin).
119. IS in its various forms occurs only seven times in EP IV: the other occurrences are of feminine singular ea at i 17, viii 27 & xiv 11, of eius at xv 6 (its only occurrence in the Ex Ponto), of accusative id at i 19, and of accusative neuter plural ea at x 35.
The elegiac poets avoided the use of is, preferring hic, ille, and iste. The singular nominative forms were the only ones used relatively freely by Ovid (about forty instances of each); Tibullus and Propertius avoided even these (Platnauer 116; Axelson 70-71).
119. QVO LAEVVS FVERAT SVB PRAESIDE PONTVS. See at 75 praefuit his ... locis modo Flaccus ([p 308]).
119. LAEVVS ... PONTVS = Euxini litora laeua (Tr IV i 60). A similar brachylogy at EP I iv 31 'iunctior Haemonia est Ponto quam Roma sinistro [Burman: sit Histro codd]'.
119. PRAESIDE. This seems to be the first instance of praeses 'governor' in Latin. It is found in prose from Tacitus and Suetonius on: Trajan even uses it in his official correspondence (Pliny Ep X xliv).
119. FVERAT. See at vi 12 nec fueram tanti ([p 230]).
121. AVDIERIT. Probably a perfect subjunctive 'may have heard', although possibly an epistolary future perfect indicative ('when you receive this, your brother will perhaps [forsitan] have heard'). For the perfect subjunctive compare Met X 560-62 'forsitan audieris aliquam certamine cursus / ueloces superasse uiros'.