The hyperbaton of _tota ... Pontica terra_ seems standard enough. Wheeler translates _licet quaeras_ as 'you are free to inquire', which may be right; however, the phrase does indeed seem awkward, and _licet_ may be an intrusive gloss that has displaced _uelim_: compare _Her_ IV 18 'fama--_uelim quaeras_--crimine nostra uacat'. The repetition of _Pontica terra_ and _Pontica ... tellus_ is a very strong argument for deleting one of the two distichs. However, 115-16 seems more likely to be the interpolation in view of the difficulties discussed in the next note. =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).