Tarantus
a nickname bestowed on Caracalla, after his death, from a gladiator of diminutive stature and repulsive aspect. It is first mentioned by Dio Cassius in the ninth chapter of his seventy-eighth book, and in the subsequent portions of his history he uniformly designates the son of Severus by this appellation.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.