Or Delenda est Carthago!, as every schoolboy used to learn before the educational elite decided that Latin was no longer worth it and the classical world was of no interest to the modern one. If it’s relevance they want, they should all head for the Traverse in Edinburgh to watch Alan Wilkins’s engrossing new play about power, politics, and decadence, set against the improbable background of the Third Punic War, in 149BC.

Classicists may know that Carthage, near modern-day Tunis, had been a real threat to Rome’s power in the Mediterranean. But 50 years after Hannibal and his elephants had been comprehensively defeated, Marcus Porcius Cato, the preeminent Roman senator, decided that defeat was not enough: the North African city had to be destroyed.

You know how it is; grain and oil prices (olive oil, but make whatever connections you like) were up, trade was down, domestic unrest was simmering. Cato especially despised the “boys and baths” culture which he thought was sapping his city’s moral fibre. What better than a quick foreign adventure to fill the coffers, stiffen the sinews and restore the good old days?

Wilkins’s play is not precise history. But his grasp of the way politics works – the dripping of poison into the ears of the chattering classes, the jockeying for tiny advantage – is both persuasive and chilling. It is not hard to discern echoes of the tactics and rhetoric of America’s neocons and their demonisation of Iraq, and now Iran. By no means, though, is this just an elaborate metaphor for more American bashing. Wilkins and his director, Lorne Campbell, expose the very sinews of power.

The play begins in spectacular fashion with Gregor, a wily old senator, emerging from below the water of a Roman bath where he has been concealed as the audience files in. He and Marcus, another, younger pretender, are there to meet Cato, who wants them to prepare the ground for his adventure.

Wilkins introduces one additional element, Cato’s beautiful nephew, David. For trying to seduce him, the distinctly unmilitary Gregor gets sent to oversee the war. There he finds another pretty Carthaginian boy. The invasion has “all got a bit messy”, as Marcus puts it when the action moves to North Africa. Gregor’s self-indulgence is part of the problem.

Campbell paces the long speeches skilfully. The second act, outside Carthage, is perhaps a fraction less compelling than the first, but Tony Guilfoyle as Cato, oozing menace and moral superiority through every pore, and Sean Campion, as the silvery-tongued, sleek but shifty Gregor, are in tremendous form, circling one another like prizefighters. If you find the theatre of politics hard to resist, this production is highly recommended.

Box office 0131-228 1404; to May 19

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette