What's the big deal you say? They couldn't actually confirm anything until recently when they cut through thick marble to take some fragment for carbon dating and discovered also in his tomb a blue fabric (like the kind you see on Hebrew prayer shawls perhaps?) and royal purple cloth with red fragments of incense (used by priests perhaps?) This image above is the earliest known image of him apparently.
If you were shipwrecked three times, floated out to sea for a night and a day, were stoned to near death and left for dead, flogged, and imprisoned repeatedly,and travelled from Jerusalem to Rome, everywhere inbetween and back (without frequent flier miles or a Eurorail pass), you might find yourself looking rather gaunt and in need of a shave too. Today and yesterday we remember these martyrs. He likely met his demise when the mad nut-job Nero torched half of Rome and all the Christians he could find in his path.
Paul didn't ask for Martyrdom, it was just the price he was forced to pay. Christ didn't ask anyone to sign up for psychological suicide bombing anywhere or anyone- he died so you would have life and have it abundantly. Living at half-mast or half living isn't the sort of living death martyrdom that Jesus ever asked for. He died so that you would truly live-to the full in all abundance.
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