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I think that how commanders deal with their defeats shows their wisdom and their humanity and other traits. But if the criteria is military greatness, I think that victory is the coin of the realm. Much like football or chess games: how a side deals with defeat shows their mettle, teaches things, etc. But the unbeaten team at the end of the season is still the best team.

The Celts military history shows their passion for war but also the flaw in the civilization. Hot blooded, they spoiled for a fight. But they could not long endure any sort of discipline and command over them in any sort of supra-clannish way. The result: wild warfare, but the more organized states steadily plowed them under. Celts would fight Celts in the face of a foreign threat. And in the end lost their land to the foreigner - the classic case of hanging separately because of the adamant, persistent, cultural refusal to hang together.

I assure you, I am sadly familiar with the martial histories of the various Celtic peoples of the world.

However in a way they show why I believe your requirement for "victory" is an incorrect vision of "Military Greatness". You seem to dismiss the fact that a defeat can be as useful to a nation, or a culture, as a victory is, maybe even more so.

Even if we stick to pure military actions and considerations some of the Greatest moments in military history were defeats.

Leoniads at Thermopaleae, to the Alamo, to the Battle of the bulge, initial defeat allows final victory.

Victory of WAR is all that counts, you can win all of the battles and still lose the WAR. Or you can win all your WARs and still lose.

(The term "Pyrrhic victory is based on the very real history of the very real King Pyrrhus of Epirus, after all.)