John: an 'Empire' implies some kind of central command or coordination, even if we let you get away with an Empire with no Emperor. It's worth pointing out that if we accept your contention that scattered tribes with different but related languages are an Empire then the biggest Empire in the pre-Roman world would be us Germanic types! Germanic peoples like the Visigoths even made it to places like Nth Africa.

I 'm releived that the Celts saw what those rotten ol' Greeks did with written language in time to decide not to learn it. It's just a bit odd how you know that, since they couldn't have recorded this decision. Still just think what a lucky escape they had! There's no doubt that Greek readin' and writin' types like Plato, Sophocles, Thales, Epicurus, Aristotle, Sappho, Hesiod, Anaximander, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus etc, etc have added very little to European culture compared with the Celts.

By the way we ancient Teutons could have had a written language too, but decided against it because messing about with ink and vellum interfered with our psychic channelling to Atlantis.