Saturday Night Live provides a perfect example of a death which makes one olbios -- ritually blessed, particularly when associated with hero cult. The scene is the funeral of Superman, whom DC comics (controversially) killed off in 1992 (by the appropriately named bad guy Doomsday). Never fear -- though Superman has his funeral (below), he is by the magic of narrative resurrected some five months later.
In the clip below, all of the other superheroes (Superman's philoi) attend his funeral. Notice how strangely the Hulk eulogizes Superman: it's not that Superman wasn't pretty super during his law enforcement career, but 'in death, he has become the ideal. Superman is my hero.' This is so perfectly in tune with hero-cult, the mind reels. As in the case of Croesus in Herodotus (Book One), a hero (or a person) can only become olbios, 'ideal', at the moment of death: before a person's telos, there is always the possibility of a dramatic reversal. This will become most apparent in the Oedipus cycle of Sophocles, in which Oedipus does indeed become olbios through death; however awful his life, his ending (at Colonus) is portrayed as a mystical, purifying event.
