De oratore became the first book printed in Italy using movable type in 1465.
The edition was produced at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, near Rome, by the German printers Arnold Pannartz and Conrad Sweynheym. Their press helped transfer Gutenberg’s printing technology into Italy, where humanist scholars and church institutions quickly adopted it.
The text itself is a Latin dialogue on rhetoric by Marcus Tullius Cicero, written in 55 BCE. The Italian edition was not the first work printed there: a Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus is generally associated with the earliest Subiaco experiments, but surviving evidence for that fragment is incomplete. De oratore is therefore usually identified as the first substantial book printed in Italy. Venice soon became Italy’s leading printing centre, especially after Aldus Manutius established his press there in 1494.