The career of Sweynheym and Pannartz in partnership at Rome lasted but little over six years, their latest book bearing the date 31 December, 1473. Already in March, 1472, they were in difficulties, and printed a letter to Pope Sixtus IV begging for some pecuniary aid. They had printed, they said, no fewer than 11,475 volumes, and gave a list of the different books and of the numbers printed of each. Four of these editions were of 300 copies, the rest of 275, and we can see from the list that there had been three editions of the _Lactantius_ and _De Ciuitate Dei_ and two each of Cicero's _Epistulae Familiares_, _De Oratore_, and _Opera Philosophica_, and also of Virgil, so that clearly some of their books had shown a profit. But the list is entirely made up of Latin classics, "profane" and theological, and by March, 1472, printing had been introduced into at least ten other Italian cities (Venice, Foligno, Trevi, Ferrara, Milan, Florence, Treviso, Bologna, Naples, and Savigliano), and in most, if not all of these, the one idea of the first printers was to produce as many Latin classics as possible, as though no other firm in Italy were doing the same thing. Unable to obtain help from the Pope, Sweynheym and Pannartz dissolved partnership, the former devoting himself to engraving maps for an edition of Ptolemy's _Geographia_, which he did not live to see (it was printed by Arnold Bucking in 1478), while Pannartz resumed business on a somewhat smaller scale on his own account, and died in 1476. At Venice, the first printer, Johann of Speier, seems to have had some foreboding of what might happen, and thoughtfully protected himself against competition by procuring from the Senate an exclusive privilege for printing at Venice during the space of five years. This might seriously have retarded the development of the press at Venice. Johann, however, after printing two editions of Cicero's _Epistulae ad familiares_ and Pliny's _Historia naturalis_ in 1469, was carried off by death while working on his fourth book, S. Augustine's _De Ciuitate Dei_, in 1470, and his brother Wendelin, or Vindelinus, who took over the business, had no privilege to protect him from competition.