geo.wikisort.org - River

Helicon (also transliterated Helikon) was a river of the Macedonian city Dion.[1]

There is also a river called Helikon [in Pieria]. After a course of seventy-five stades the stream hereupon disappears under the earth. After a gap of about twenty-two stades the water rises again, and under the name of Baphyras instead of Helikon flows into the sea as a navigable river. The people of Dion (Dium) say that at first this River flowed on land throughout its course. But, they go on to say, the women who killed Orpheus wished to wash off in it the blood-stains, and thereat the River sank underground, so as not to lend its waters to cleanse manslaughter.

— Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 30. 8 (trans. W.H.S. Jones and H.A. Ormerod) (Greek travelogue c. 2nd A.D.)[2]

This article or section may fail to make a clear distinction between fact and fiction. (December 2018)

Helicon was briefly mentioned in stories of Orpheus. After he was killed by some of Dionysus' followers, the women tried to wash their hands clean of the blood spilt. The river sank itself so as not to become tainted with the murdered man's blood.

References

Bibliography

• Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation, trans. W.H.S. Jones, and H.A. Ormerod, (Cambridge: MA, Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1918).

На других языках

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- [en] Helicon (river)

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[ru] Геликон (река)

Геликон (др.-греч. Ελικώνας) — древняя река Пиерии, также известная как Бафира (Βαφύρας) и Орлиас (Ουρλιάς). В этой реке, согласно мифологии, менады Пиерии пытались смыть кровь с рук после убийства Орфея. Однако речной бог ушёл под землю и вновь вышел на Дион под именем Бафира[1].

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