In meias res, also medias in res (Latin for "into the middle of things") is a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning (ab ovo or ab initio). The characters, setting, and conflict are often introduced through a series of flashbacks or through characters relating past events to each other. Probably originating from an oral tradition, the technique was established in the 8th century BC in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and became a convention of epic poetry. Other folk epics beginning in medias res include the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid, Germany's Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs), the East Indian Mahābhārata, and the Finnish Kalevala. Virgil's Aeneid began the tradition in literature of imitating Homer, continued in Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, John Milton's Paradise Lost and Inferno from Dante's Divine Comedy.