martyrdom · 287 · Rome
The solid record is short. There was a martyr Sebastian at Rome, buried in the catacomb on the Appian Way that took his name, and by 354 his grave was one of the three principal martyr shrines of the city, listed in the Depositio Martyrum on 20 January. Ambrose says he came from Milan. Everything else — the commission in the praetorian guard, Diocletian's favour, the discovery, the archers, the recovery in Irene's house, the second arrest and the beating to death — is from a passion of about 430, and this dataset grades the event traditional for that reason. Two things followed from the legend that are worth recording. He became the plague saint of the middle ages, on the reasoning that arrows are how plague strikes; and the moment the painters chose — a young man pierced and not yet dead — made him one of the most painted figures in European art, which is a strange afterlife for a name in a list.
Why is he always painted full of arrows when the arrows did not kill him?
Because the fifth-century passion says he survived them and was then clubbed to death — and painters preferred the first half.