 Geoffrey Ashe is one dissenter from this view, believing that Geoffrey's narrative is partially derived from a lost source telling of the deeds of a 5th-century British king named Riotamus, this figure being the original Arthur, although historians and Celticists have been reluctant to follow Ashe in his conclusions.Whatever his sources may have been, the immense popularity of Geoffrey's "Historia Regum Britanniae" cannot be denied.Well over 200 manuscript copies of Geoffrey's Latin work are known to have survived, as well as translations into other languages.