Forced to support himself after his father's economic downfall, during a national economic crisis, Ibsen went to Grimstad as a pharmacist's apprentice. There he both prepared himself for university and experimented with various forms of poetry. While studying, he found himself passionately drawn into the "Catiline orations", famous speeches by Cicero against the elected questor Catiline and his conspiracy to overthrow the republic. Ibsen chose this conspirator as the subject for his initial effort, finishing "Catiline" in 1849. Ibsen expresses in the prologue to the second edition (1875) that he was profoundly inspired by the contemporary political situation of Europe, and that he favored the Magyar uprising against the Habsburg empire. He explains that the case of Catiline had special interest for him, because ""there are given few examples of historical persons, whose memory has been more entirely in the possession of their conquerors, than Catiline"". Thus, Catiline can be read as one of Ibsen's troubled (and troubling) heroes, alongside Brand and Gregers Werle.