https://youtu.be/yxdRTaAp5Fw

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This is the book. In particular the battle that occurs midway through between the Spartans and another Greek city in the 490s BC. I hope it's not too much but I'll quote some excerpts.

A portion of the plain adjacent the wall was occupied by a maritime junkyard; rotting craft lay littered at all angles, extending halfway across the field, amid tumbledown work shacks and stinking mounds of debris squalled over by wheeling flocks of gulls. In addition the enemy had strewn boulders and driftwood to break up the flat over which Leonidas and his men must advance. Their own side, the foe's, had been cleared smooth as a schoolmaster's desk.

When they knew where a battle would take place, did one side ever scatter obstacles on the enemy's side to disrupt their advance while keeping their own side clean?

the Spartan Skiritai rangers had just finished setting the enemy refuse yards ablaze. ... This did not deter the Skiritai from torching the wharves and warehouses of the harbor. ... these light-armed forces had been cleared early by the Skiritai, whose comrades below would advance as always from their position of honor on the Lakedaemonian left. The rangers took possession of half the face, driving the enemy skirmishers back where their slings and shafts were outranged and could work no harm to the army. ... Now the Spartans and Tegeates advanced to their positions in the line. First the Skiritai, on the left, forty-eight shields across and eight deep ... The Skiritai had routed the enemy right. ...

What were the Skiritai? I've heard that they performed specialist roles in the Spartan army. Here it seems that they act as both skirmishers and heavy infantry who take a position of honor on the Spartan left. Is this plausible?

Squires armed the warriors from the feet up ... The total, excluding armed squires ranging as auxiliaries, exceeded forty-five hundred and extended wing to wing across the plain for nearly six hundred meters. ...

Each Spartan hoplite has a "helot squire" who fights alongside him, usually in a light infantry role. Is this accurate?

starting with the heavy oxhide soles which could tread over fire; ... the soles of their footgear churning up trenches in the plain and slinging yet more dust into the already choking air.

The Spartans are depicted as wearing heavy footgear for battle. I've heard that Greek hoplites are always depicted barefoot in artwork, but I don't see how that could have possibly been the case in reality. It seems like shoes would be of the upmost importance in battle when you can't control what terrain you'll be fighting on or where you'll be stepping. The Romans seem to have known that. Just stubbing his toe before battle could put the strongest warrior out of commission. Is this plausible?

This process of arming for battle, which the citizen-soldiers of other poleis had practiced no more than a dozen times a year in the spring and summer training, the Spartans had rehearsed and rerehearsed, two hundred, four hundred, six hundred times each campaigning season. Men in their fifties had done this ten thousand times. It was as second-nature to them as oiling or dusting their limbs before wrestling or dressing their long hair,

Did the Spartans really rehearse and drill for battle this much in comparison to other Greek city states and did that give them a significant advantage?

Finally the men scribed their names or signs upon skytalides, the improvised twig bracelets they called tickets, which would distinguish their bodies should they, falling, be maimed too hideously to be identified. They used wood because it was valueless as plunder by the enemy.

Were something like dog tags used

Among the enemy's ranks, the bravest (or perhaps the most fear-stricken) began banging the ash of their spear shafts upon the bronze bowls of their shields, creating a tumult of pseudoandreia which reverberated across and around the mountain-enclosed plain. Others reinforced this racket with the warlike thrusting of their spearpoints to heaven and the loosing of cries to the gods and shouts of threat and anger. ... Their commander thrust his spear forward and the mass surged behind him into the advance. ... In the enemy's plan, no doubt, the sinuous defile of the river would disorder the Lakedaemonian ranks and render them vulnerable at the moment of attack. The Spartans, however, had outwaited them. As soon as the bronze-banging began, the enemy commanders knew they could not restrain their ranks longer; they must advance while their men's blood was up, or all fervor would dissipate and terror flood inevitably into the vacuum.

Here the less well-trained trained hoplites become impatient and begin a disordered advance against their commanders' judgement, while the more disciplined Spartans outwait them. Are situations like this recorded as happening in Greek warfare?

Here came the foe, picking up the pace of his advance. A fast walk. A swinging stride. The line was extending and fanning open to the right, winging out as men in fear edged into the shadow of the shield of the comrade on their right; already one could see the enemy ranks stagger and fall from alignment as the bravest surged forward and the hesitant shrank back.

Was this a danger when advancing? I know formations had a tendency to drift to the right as described, so how was this counteracted? Did commanders try to advance more slowly or not advance at all if they didn't think their men were capable of maintaining cohesion?

The left wing of the enemy, eighty across, collapsed even before the shields of their promachoi, the front-rankers, had come within thirty paces of the Spartans. A cry of dread rose from the throats of the foe, so primal it froze the blood, and then was swallowed in the tumult.

The enemy left broke from within.

This wing, whose advancing breadth had stood an instant earlier at forty-eight shields, abruptly became thirty, then twenty, then ten as panic flared like a gale-driven fire from terror-stricken pockets within the massed formation. Those in the first three ranks who turned in flight now collided with their comrades advancing from the rear. Shield rim caught upon shield rim, spear shaft upon spear shaft; a massive tangle of flesh and bronze ensued as men bearing seventy pounds of shield and armor stumbled and fell, becoming obstacles and impediments to their own advancing comrades. You could see the brave men stride on in the advance, crying out in rage to their countrymen as these abandoned them. Those who still clung to courage pushed past those who had forsaken it, calling out in outrage and fury, trampling the forerankers, or else, as valor deserted them too, jerked free and fled to save their own skins.

Is this a plausible way that hoplite formations could collapse before even making contact with the enemy?

That sound which all warriors know but which to Alexandras' and my youthful ears had been heretofore unknown and unheard now ascended from the clash and collision of the othismos.

Once, at home when I was a child, Bruxieus and! had helped our neighbor Pierion relocate three of his stacked wooden beehives. As we jockeyed the stack into place upon its new stand, someone's foot slipped. The stacked hives dropped. From within those stoppered confines yet clutched in our hands arose such an alarum, neither shriek nor cry, growl nor roar, but a thrum from the netherworld, a vibration of rage and murder that ascended not from brain or heart, but from the cells, the atoms of the massed poleis within the hives.

This selfsame sound, multiplied a hundred-thousandfold, now rose from the massed compacted crush of men and armor roiling beneath us on the plain. Now I understood the poet's phrase the mill of Ares and apprehended in my flesh why the Spartans speak of war as work.

The sound of battle is vividly compared to an angry beehive. Are there any ancient descriptions of what battle sounded like?

They were in the smoke now. It became impossible to see. Dust rose in such quantities beneath the churning feet of the men, commingling with the screen of smoke from the tindered hulks, that the entire plain seemed afire, and from the choking cloud arose that sound, that terrible indescribable sound.

Did ancient battles really kick up a lot of dust?

I had never appreciated how far beyond the interleaved bronze of the promachoi's shields the murderous iron of their eight-footers could extend. These punched and struck, overhand, driven by the full force of the right arm and shoulder, across the upper rim of the shield; not just the spears of the front-rankers but those of the second and even the third, extending over their mates' shoulders to form a thrashing engine that advanced like a wall of murder. ...

On the center and right, along the whole line the Spartans and Syrakusans clashed now shield-to-shield, helmet-to-helmet. Amid the maelstrom we could catch only glimpses, and those primarily of the rear-rankers, eight deep on the Lakedaemonian side, twelve and sixteen deep on the Syrakusan, as they thrust the three-foot-wide bowls of their hoplon shields flush against the backs of the men in file before them and heaved and ground and shoved with all their strength, the soles of their footgear churning up trenches in the plain and slinging yet more dust into the already choking air.

No longer was it possible to distinguish individual men, or even units. We could see only the tidal surge and back-surge of the massed formations and hear without ceasing that terrible, bloodstilling sound.

Is this a plausible depiction of when both sides clashed? Did the rear ranks really push their shields into the backs of those in front in certain circumstances and is that where the word the "othismos" comes from?

It was of no use. The Spartan front-rankers, men of the first five age-classes, were the cream of the city in foot speed and strength, none save the officers over twenty-five years old. Many, like Polynikes in the van among the Knights, were sprinters of Olympic and near-Olympic stature with garland after garland won in games before the gods. These now, loosed by Leonidas and driven on by their own lust for glory, pressed home the sentence of steel upon the fleeing Syrakusans.

Is there evidence that young men and sprinters were especially used to press home an attack on a retreating enemy?

Here the earth was rent and torn as if a thousand span of oxen had assaulted it all day with the might of their hooves and the steel of their ploughs' deep-churning blades. The chewed-up dirt, dark with piss and blood, extended in a line three hundred meters across and a hundred deep where the feet of the contending formations had heaved and strained for purchase upon the earth.

This might be hyperbolic, but are there any accounts of the earth of battlefields themselves looking torn up from all the fighting?

They had routed the enemy left; their front ranks now surged into the business of cutting down those luckless bastards who had fallen or been trampled or whose panic-unstrung knees could not find strength to bear them swiftly enough from their own slaughter. ... The Spartans were hauling bodies off the stacks of the dead, seeking friend or brother, wounded and clinging yet to life. As each groaning foeman was flung down, a xiphos blade held him captive at the throat. Hold! Leonidas cried, motioning urgently to the trumpeters to resound the call to break off. Attend them! Attend the enemy too! he shouted, and the officers relayed the order up and down the line.

The Spartans are portrayed as killing wounded during the battle but then taking them prisoner once resistance had ceased. How were enemy wounded usually treated in Greek warfare?