Long before 1066, Gildas gives the first recorded germs of the Arthurian story in his _De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae_, though they are hardly distinguishable as such. His failure to mention the name of Arthur, though treating of the whole period when Arthur is supposed to have lived, he himself being contemporary with the period, raises the very difficult question which we have already mentioned, Did the mighty Brythonic hero ever have an actual historical existence? Almost three hundred years later--a period sufficiently removed from Gildas to have made Arthur the supreme champion of the falling Brythons, granting that he did exist during the sixth century as a Brythonic chieftain--in the _Historia Britonum_, completed about the year 800, and attributed to Nennius, Arthur, for the first time in a known manuscript, is mentioned as a character of British history.[297] All that can be definitely said of the narrative of Nennius 'is that it represents more or less inconsistent British traditions of uncertain age'.[297] That it is not always historical, many scholars are agreed. Dr. R. H. Fletcher says, 'There is always the possibility that Arthur never existed at all, and that even Nennius's comparatively modest eulogy has no firmer foundation than the persistent stories of ancient Celtic myth or the patriotic figments of the ardent Celtic imagination.'[298] Sir John Rhŷs also propounds a similar view.[299] Thus, for example, Nennius states that Arthur in one battle slew single handed more than nine hundred men; and, again, that the number of Arthur's always-successful battles was twelve, as though Arthur were the sun or a sun-god, and his battles the twelve months of the solar year.[298]