The words which follow the introduction which speaks of the editor 'recomposing' or rescuing an original core text 'tampered with' by a previous apostate is immediately followed by a long discussion of the 'Pontic' nature of Marcion. I think if we look carefully at this section the 'Pontic' nature is very much an 'Amazonian' nature of the sect. The Amazons derived their origin from the Black Sea. Plutarch mentions that the campaign(s) of Heracles and Theseus against the Amazons was at Euxine Sea (modern Black Sea).
In Against Marcion we see a reflection of countless Amazon-Euxine allusions.The origin of the word is uncertain. It may be derived from an Iranian ethnonym *ha-mazan- "warriors", a word attested indirectly through a derivation, a denominal verb in Hesychius of Alexandria's gloss "ἁμαζακάραν· πολεμεῖν. Πέρσαι" ("hamazakaran: 'to make war' in Persian"), where it appears together with the Indo-Iranian root *kar- "make" (from which Sanskrit karma is also derived).[17]
It may also be derived from *ṇ-mṇ-gw-jon-es "manless, without husbands" (a- privative and a derivation of *man- also found in Slavic muzh) has been proposed, an explanation deemed "unlikely" by Hjalmar Frisk.[18] 19th-century scholarship also connected the term to the ethnonym Amazigh.[19] A further explanation proposes Iranian *ama-janah "virility-killing" as source.[20]
The Hittite researcher Friedrich Cornelius assumes that there had been the land Azzi with the capital Chajasa in the area of the Thermodon-Iris Delta on the coast of the Black Sea. He brings its residents in direct relation to the Amazons, namely based on its name (woman of the land Azzi = 'Am'+ 'Azzi' = Amazon) and its customs (matriarchal custom of promiscuous sexual intercourse, even with blood relatives). The location of that land as well as his conclusions are controversial.
— Gerhard Pollauer[21]
Among Classical Greeks, amazon was given a folk etymology as originating from a- (ἀ-) and mazos (μαζός), "without breast", connected with an etiological tradition once claimed by Marcus Justinus who alleged that Amazons had their right breast cut off or burnt out.[22] There is no indication of such a practice in ancient works of art,[23] in which the Amazons are always represented with both breasts, although one is frequently covered.[24][23] Adrienne Mayor suggests the origin of this myth was due to the word's etymology.
The question of course did the Amazonian connect lead to Marcion being born in Pontus or vice versa. I think the former. The clearest proof of this is the location of the Amazonian city Themiskrya:The sea called Euxine, or hospitable, is belied by its nature and put to ridicule by its name. Even its situation would prevent you from reckoning Pontus hospitable: as though ashamed of its own barbarism it has set itself at a distance from our more civilized waters. Strange tribes inhabit it—if indeed living in a wagon can be called inhabiting. These have no certain dwelling-place: their life is uncouth: their sexual activity is promiscuous, and for the most part naked (plurimum nuda) even when they hide it: they advertise it by hanging a quiver on the yoke of the wagon, so that none may inadvertently break in while they are having sex https://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua- ... al-amazons, https://books.google.com/books?id=rboWB ... 22&f=false. So little respect have they for their weapons of war. They carve up their fathers' corpses along with mutton, to gulp down at banquets. If any die in a condition not good for eating, their death is a disgrace.
Women also have lost the gentleness, along with the modesty, of their sex. They display their breasts, they do their house-work with battle-axes, they prefer fighting to matrimonial duty.Herodotus 1.216 Now, for their customs: each man marries a wife, but the wives are common to all. The Greeks say this is a Scythian custom; it is not so, but a custom of the Massagetae. There, when a man desires a woman, he hangs his quiver before her waggon, and has intercourse with her, none hindering. Though they set no certain term to life, yet when a man is very old all his kin meet together and kill him, with beasts of the flock besides, then boil the flesh and feast on it. This is held to be the happiest death; when a man dies of sickness they do not eat him, but bury him in the earth, and lament that he would not live to be killed.
Hellanikos of Lesbos (ca. 480-ca. 400 B.C.) a contemporary of Herodotos: " they are called Amazons because they cut off their right breast to prevent it from getting in the way when they use their bows. This is untrue, because that would have been fatal to them.
There is sternness also in the climate—never broad daylight, the sun always niggardly, the only air they have is fog, the whole year is winter, every wind that blows is the north wind. Water becomes water only by heating: rivers are no rivers, only ice: mountains are piled high up with snow: all is torpid, everything stark. https://books.google.com/books?id=VFS4q ... ns&f=false
Savagery is there the only thing warm—such savagery as has provided the theatre with tales of Tauric sacrifices (Iphigenia of Euripides), Colchian love-affairs (Medea of Euripides), and Caucasian crucifixions (Prometheus of Aeschylus). Even so, the most barbarous and melancholy thing about
Pontus is that Marcion was born there, more uncouth than a Scythian, more unsettled than a Wagon-dweller, more uncivilized than a Massagete, with more effrontery than an Amazon, darker than fog, colder than winter, more brittle than ice, more treacherous than the Danube, more precipitous than Caucasus. Evidently so, when by him the true Prometheus, God Almighty, is torn to bits with blasphemies. More ill-conducted also is Marcion than the wild beasts of that barbarous land: for is any beaver more self-castrating (castor castrator carnis) than this man who has abolished marriage? What Pontic mouse is more corrosive than the man who has gnawed away the Gospels? Truly the Euxine has given birth to a wild animal more acceptable to philosophers than to Christians: that dog-worshipper Diogenes carried a lamp about at midday, looking to find a man, whereas Marcion by putting out the light of his own faith has lost the God whom once he had found.