This Overture was inspired by a holiday spent in Italy in 1903, and was first performed at the Elgar Festival given at Covent Garden in the following year. The score is prefaced by some lines of Tennyson:
'...What hours were thine and mine.
In lands of palm and southern pine
In lands of palm, of orange blossom,
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.

The manuscript bears a further quotation from Byron's 'Childe Harold' in which Italy is apostrophised as 'the garden of the world.' Elgar himself said that the middle section of the Overture came to his mind as his thoughts turned to the glories of ancient Rome; in the music he 'endeavoured to paint the relentless and domineering onward force of the ancient day, and to give a sound-picture of the strife and wars, the "drums and tramplings" of a later time.'