Helicon (also transliterated Helikon), also called Baphyras, was a river attested in antiquity, which existed near the Macedonian city of Dion in Pieria.Jennifer Lynn Larson, Greek nymphs: myth, cult, lore (Oxford University Press US, 2001), 139. Pausanias describes it as vanishing underground and resurfacing under a different name, and relates an Orphic tradition that the river sank after the maenads who had killed Orpheus tried to cleanse themselves of blood (and the ritual pollution of murder) in its waters.
Mythology The river-god was submerged after the murder of Orpheus. In Pausanias' words:
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).