title: Hermes

text: The etymology of ἕρμα itself is unknown, but is probably not a Proto-Indo-European word. R. S. P. Beekes rejects the connection with "herma" and suggests a Pre-Greek origin. However, the stone etymology is also linked to Indo-European "*ser-" ("to bind, put together"). Scholarly speculation that "Hermes" derives from a more primitive form meaning "one cairn" is disputed. Other scholars have suggested that Hermes may be a cognate of the Vedic Sarama.


title: Hermes

text: It is likely that Hermes is a pre-Hellenic god, though the exact origins of his worship, and its original nature, remain unclear. Frothingham thought the god to have existed as a Mesopotamian snake-god, similar or identical to Ningishzida, a god who served as mediator between humans and the divine, especially Ishtar, and who was depicted in art as a Caduceus. Angelo (1997) thinks Hermes to be based on the Thoth archetype. The absorbing ("combining") of the attributes of Hermes to Thoth developed after the time of Homer amongst Greeks and Romans; Herodotus was the first to identify the Greek god with the Egyptian (Hermopolis) (Plutarch and Diodorus also did so), although Plato thought the gods were dissimilar (Friedlander 1992).


title: Hermes

text: His cult was established in Greece in remote regions, likely making him originally a god of nature, farmers, and shepherds. It is also possible that since the beginning he has been a deity with shamanic attributes linked to divination, reconciliation, magic, sacrifices, and initiation and contact with other planes of existence, a role of mediator between the worlds of the visible and invisible. According to a theory that has received considerable scholarly acceptance, Hermes originated as a form of the god Pan, who has been identified as a reflex of the Proto-Indo-European pastoral god "*Péhusōn", in his aspect as the god of boundary markers. Later, the epithet supplanted the original name itself and Hermes took over the roles as god of messengers, travelers, and boundaries, which had originally belonged to Pan, while Pan himself continued to be venerated by his original name in his more rustic aspect as the god of the wild in the relatively isolated mountainous region of Arcadia. In later myths, after the cult of Pan was reintroduced to Attica, Pan was said to be Hermes's son.


title: Hermes

text: The image of Hermes evolved and varied along with Greek art and culture. In Archaic Greece he was usually depicted as a mature man, bearded, and dressed as a traveler, herald, or shepherd. This image remained common on the Hermai, which served as boundary markers, roadside markers, and grave markers, as well as votive offerings.


title: Hermes

text: In Classical and Hellenistic Greece, Hermes was usually depicted as a young, athletic man lacking a beard. When represented as Logios (Greek: Λόγιος, speaker), his attitude is consistent with the attribute. Phidias left a statue of a famous Hermes Logios and Praxiteles another, also well known, showing him with the baby Dionysus in his arms.


title: Hermes

text: At all times, however, through the Hellenistic periods, Roman, and throughout Western history into the present day, several of his characteristic objects are present as identification, but not always all together. Among these objects is a wide-brimmed hat, the petasos, widely used by rural people of antiquity to protect themselves from the sun, and that in later times was adorned with a pair of small wings; sometimes this hat is not present, and may have been replaced with wings rising from the hair.


title: Hermes

text: Another object is the caduceus, a staff with two intertwined snakes, sometimes crowned with a pair of wings and a sphere. The caduceus, historically, appeared with Hermes, and is documented among the Babylonians from about 3500 BC. Two snakes coiled around a staff was also a symbol of the god Ningishzida, who, like Hermes, served as a mediator between humans and the divine (specifically, the goddess Ishtar or the supreme Ningirsu). In Greece, other gods have been depicted holding a caduceus, but it was mainly associated with Hermes. It was said to have the power to make people fall asleep or wake up, and also made peace between litigants, and is a visible sign of his authority, being used as a sceptre. A similar-appearing but distinct symbol is the Rod of Asclepius, associated with the patron of medicine and son of Apollo, Asclepius, which bears only one snake. The Rod of Asclepius, occasionally conflated with the caduceus in modern times, is used by most Western physicians as a badge of their profession. After the Renaissance, the caduceus also appeared in the heraldic crests of several, and currently is a symbol of commerce.


title: Hermes

text: Hermes' sandals, called "pédila" by the Greeks and "talaria" by the Romans, were made of palm and myrtle branches but were described as beautiful, golden and immortal, made a sublime art, able to take the roads with the speed of wind. Originally, they had no wings, but late in the artistic representations, they are depicted. In certain images, the wings spring directly from the ankles. Hermes has also been depicted with a purse or a bag in his hands, wearing a robe or cloak, which had the power to confer invisibility. His weapon was a sword of gold, which killed Argos; it was also lent to Perseus to kill Medusa.


title: Hermes

text: Hermes began as a god with strong chthonic, or underworld, associations. He was a psychopomp, leader of souls along the road between "the Under and the Upper world". This function gradually expanded to encompass roads in general, and from there to boundaries, travelers, sailors, and commerce.


title: Hermes

text: Beginning with the earliest records of his worship, Hermes has been understood as a chthonic deity (heavily associated with the earth and/or underworld). As a chthonic deity, the worship of Hermes also included an aspect relating to fertility, with the phallus being included among his major symbols. The inclusion of phallic imagery associated with Hermes and placed, in the form of "herma", at the entrances to households may reflect a belief in ancient times that Hermes was a symbol of the household's fertility, specifically the potency of the male head of the household in producing children.


title: Hermes

text: The association between Hermes and the underworld is related to his function as a god of boundaries (the boundary between life and death), but he is considered a psychopomp, a deity who helps guide souls of the deceased to the afterlife, and his image was commonly depicted on gravestones in classical Greece.


title: Hermes

text: In Ancient Greece, Hermes was a phallic god of boundaries. His name, in the form "herma", was applied to a wayside marker pile of stones and each traveler added a stone to the pile. In the 6th century BC, Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, replaced the cairns that marked the midway point between each village "deme" at the central "agora" of Athens with a square or rectangular pillar of stone or bronze topped by a bust of a bearded Hermes. An erect phallus rose from the base. In the more primitive Mount Kyllini or Cyllenian herms, the standing stone or wooden pillar was simply a carved phallus. "That a monument of this kind could be transformed into an Olympian god is astounding," Walter Burkert remarked. In Athens, herms were placed outside houses, both as a form of protection for the home, a symbol of male fertility, and as a link between the household and its gods with the gods of the wider community.


title: Hermes

text: In 415 BC, on the night when the Athenian fleet was about to set sail for Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, all of the Athenian hermai were vandalized. The Athenians at the time believed it was the work of saboteurs, either from Syracuse or from the anti-war faction within Athens itself. Socrates' pupil Alcibiades was suspected of involvement, and one of the charges eventually made against Socrates which led to his execution 16 years later was that he had either corrupted Alcibiades or failed to guide him away from his moral corruption.


title: Hermes

text: In association with his role as a psychopomp and god who is able to easily cross boundaries, Hermes is prominently worshiped as a messenger, often described as the messenger of the gods (since he can convey messages between the divine realms, the underworld, and the world of mortals). As a messenger and divine herald, he wears winged sandals (or, in Roman art influenced by Etruscan depictions of Turms, a winged cap).


title: Hermes

text: Hermes was known as the patron god of flocks, herds, and shepherds, an attribute possibly tied to his early origin as an aspect of Pan. In Boeotia, Hermes was worshiped for having saved the town from a plague by carrying a ram or calf around the city walls. A yearly festival commemorated this event, during which a lamb would be carried around the city by "the most handsome boy" and then sacrificed, in order to purify and protect the city from disease, drought, and famine. Numerous depictions of Hermes as a shepherd god carrying a lamb on his shoulders ("Hermes kriophoros") have been found throughout the Mediterranean world, and it is possible that the iconography of Hermes as "The Good Shepherd" had an influence on early Christianity, specifically in the description of Christ as "the Good Shepherd" in the Gospel of John.


title: Hermes

text: The earliest written record of Hermes comes from Linear B inscriptions from Pylos, Thebes, and Knossos dating to the Bronze Age Mycenaean period. Here, Hermes' name is rendered as "e‐ma‐a" (Ἑρμάhας). This name is always recorded alongside those of several goddesses, including Potnija, Posidaeja, Diwja, Hera, Pere, and Ipemedeja, indicating that his worship was strongly connected to theirs. This is a pattern that would continue in later periods, as worship of Hermes almost always took place within temples and sanctuaries primarily dedicated to goddesses, including Hera, Demeter, Hecate, and Despoina.


title: Hermes

text: In literary works of Archaic Greece, Hermes is depicted both as a protector and a trickster. In Homer's "Iliad", Hermes is called "the bringer of good luck", "guide and guardian", and "excellent in all the tricks". In Hesiod's "The Works and Days", Hermes' is depicted giving Pandora the gifts of lies, seductive words, and a dubious character.


title: Hermes

text: The earliest known theological or spiritual documents concerning Hermes are found in the c. 7th century BC Homeric Hymns. In "Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes" describes the god's birth and his theft of Apollo's sacred cattle. In this hymn, Hermes is invoked as a god "of many shifts" ("polytropos"), associated with cunning and thievery, but also a bringer of dreams and a night guardian. He is said to have invented the chelys lyre, as well as racing and the sport of wrestling.


title: Hermes

text: The cult of Hermes flourished in Attica, and many scholars writing before the discovery of the Linear B evidence considered Hermes to be a uniquely Athenian god. This region had numerous Hermai, or pillar-like icons, dedicated to the god marking boundaries, crossroads, and entryways. These were initially stone piles, later pillars made of wood, stone, or bronze, with carved images of Hermes, a phallus, or both. In the context of these herms, by the Classical period Hermes had come to be worshiped as the patron god of travelers and sailors. By the 5th century BC, Hermai were also in common use as grave monuments, emphasizing Hermes' role as a chthonic deity and psychopomp. This was probably his original function, and he may have been a late inclusion in the Olympic pantheon; Hermes is described as the "youngest" Olympian, and some myths, including his theft of Apollo's cows, describe his initial coming into contact with celestial deities. Hermes therefore came to be worshiped as a mediator between celestial and chthonic realms, as well as the one who facilitates interactions between mortals and the divine, often being depicted on libation vessels.


title: Hermes

text: Due to his mobility and his liminal nature, mediating between opposites (such as merchant/customer), he was considered the god of commerce and social intercourse, the wealth brought in business, especially sudden or unexpected enrichment, travel, roads and crossroads, borders and boundary conditions or transient, the changes from the threshold, agreements and contracts, friendship, hospitality, sexual intercourse, games, data, the draw, good luck, the sacrifices and the sacrificial animals, flocks and shepherds and the fertility of land and cattle.


title: Hermes

text: In Athens, Hermes Eion came to represent the Athenian naval superiority in their defeat of the Persians, under the command of Cimon, in 475 BC. In this context, Hermes became a god associated with the Athenian empire and its expansion, and of democracy itself, as well as all of those closely associated with it, from the sailors in the navy, to the merchants who drove the economy. A section of the agora in Athens became known as the Hermai, because it was filled with a large number of herms, placed there as votive offerings by merchants and others who wished to commemorate a personal success in commerce or other public affair. The Hermai was probably destroyed in the Siege of Athens and Piraeus (87–86 BC).


title: Hermes

text: As Greek culture and influence spread following the conquests of Alexander the Great, a period of syncretism or "interpretatio graeca" saw many traditional Greek deities identified with foreign counterparts. In Ptolemaic Egypt, for example, the Egyptian god Thoth was identified by Greek speakers as the Egyptian form of Hermes. The two gods were worshiped as one at the Temple of Thoth in Khemenu, a city which became known in Greek as Hermopolis. This led to Hermes gaining the attributes of a god of translation and interpretation, or more generally, a god of knowledge and learning. This is illustrated by a 3rd-century BC example of a letter sent by the priest Petosiris to King Nechopso, probably written in Alexandria c. 150 BC, stating that Hermes is the teacher of all secret wisdoms, which are accessible by the experience of religious ecstasy.


title: Hermes

text: An epithet of Thoth found in the temple at Esna, "Thoth the great, the great, the great", became applied to Hermes beginning in at least 172 BC. This lent Hermes one of his most famous later titles, Hermes Trismegistus (Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος), "thrice-greatest Hermes". The figure of Hermes Trismegistus would later absorb a variety of other esoteric wisdom traditions and become a major component of Hermeticism, alchemy, and related traditions.


title: Hermes

text: As early as the 4th century BC, Romans had adopted Hermes into their own religion, combining his attributes and worship with the earlier Etruscan god Turms under the name Mercury. According to St. Augustin, the Latin name "Mercury" may be a title derived from ""medio currens"", in reference to Hermes' role as a mediator and messenger who moves between worlds. Mercury became one of the most popular Roman gods, as attested by the numerous shrines and depictions in artwork found in Pompeii. In art, the Roman Mercury continued the style of depictions found in earlier representations of both Hermes and Turms, a young, beardless god with winged shoes and/or hat, carrying the caduceus. His role as a god of boundaries, a messenger, and a psychopomp also remained unchanged following his adoption into the Roman religion (these attributes were also similar to those in the Etruscan's worship of Turms).


title: Hermes

text: The Romans identified the Germanic god Odin with Mercury, and there is evidence that Germanic peoples who had contact with Roman culture also accepted this identification. Odin and Mercury/Hermes share several attributes in common. For example, both are depicted carrying a staff and wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and both are travelers or wanderers. However, the reasons for this interpretation appear to go beyond superficial similarities: Both gods are connected to the dead (Mercury as psychopomp and Odin as lord of the dead in Valhalla), both were connected to eloquent speech, and both were associated with secret knowledge. The identification of Odin as Mercury was probably also influenced by a previous association of a more Odin-like Celtic god as the "Celtic Mercurius".


title: Hermes

text: A further Roman Imperial-era syncretism came in the form of Hermanubis, the result of the identification of Hermes with the Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis. Hermes and Anubis were both psychopomps the primary attribute leading to their conflation as the same god. Hermanubis depicted with a human body and a jackal head, holding the caduceus. In addition to his function of guiding souls to the afterlife, Hermanubis represented the Egyptian priesthood the investigation of truth.


title: Hermes

text: Beginning around the turn of the 1st century AD, a process began by which, in certain traditions Hermes became euhemerised – that is, interpreted as a historical, mortal figure who had become divine or elevated to godlike status in legend. Numerous books of wisdom and magic (including astrology, theosophy, and alchemy) were attributed to this "historical" Hermes, usually identified in his Alexandrian form of Hermes Trismegistus. As a collection, these works are referred to as the "Hermetica".


title: Hermes

text: Though worship of Hermes had been almost fully suppressed in the Roman Empire following the Christian persecution of paganism under Theodosius I in the 4th century AD, Hermes continued to be recognized as a mystical or prophetic figure, though a mortal one, by Christian scholars. Early medieval Christians such as Augustine believed that a euhemerised Hermes Trismegistus had been an ancient pagan prophet who predicted the emergence of Christianity in his writings. Some Christian philosophers in the medieval and Renaissance periods believed in the existence of a ""prisca theologia"", a single thread of true theology that could be found uniting all religions. Christian philosophers used Hermetic writings and other ancient philosophical literature to support their belief in the "prisca theologia," arguing that Hermes Trismegistus was a contemporary of Moses, or that he was the third in a line of important prophets after Enoch and Noah.


title: Hermes

text: The 10th-century "Suda" attempted to further Christianize the figure of Hermes, claiming that "He was called Trismegistus on account of his praise of the trinity, saying there is one divine nature in the trinity."


title: Hermes

text: There are only three temples known to have been specifically dedicated to Hermes during the Classical Greek period, all of them in Arcadia. Though there are a few references in ancient literature to "numerous" temples of Hermes, this may be poetic license describing the ubiquitous herms, or other, smaller shrines to Hermes located in the temples of other deities. One of the oldest places of worship for Hermes was Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, where some myths say he was born. Tradition holds that his first temple was built by Lycaon. From there, the Hermes cult would have been taken to Athens, from which it radiated to the whole of Greece. In the Roman period, additional temples to Hermes (Mercury) were constructed across the Empire, including several in modern-day Tunisia. Mercury's temple in Rome was situated in the Circus Maximus, between the Aventine and Palatine hills, and was built in 495 BC.


title: Hermes

text: In most places, temples were consecrated to Hermes in conjunction with Aphrodite, as in Attica, Arcadia, Crete, Samos and in Magna Graecia. Several ex-votos found in his temples revealed his role as initiator of young adulthood, among them soldiers and hunters, since war and certain forms of hunting were seen as ceremonial initiatory ordeals. This function of Hermes explains why some images in temples and other vessels show him as a teenager.


title: Hermes

text: As a patron of the gym and fighting, Hermes had statues in gyms and he was also worshiped in the sanctuary of the Twelve Gods in Olympia where Greeks celebrated the Olympic Games. His statue was held there on an altar dedicated to him and Apollo together.


title: Hermes

text: Pausanias wrote that during his time, at Megalopolis people could see the ruins of the temple of Hermes Acacesius.


title: Hermes

text: In addition, the Tricrena (Τρίκρηνα, meaning Three Springs) mountains at Pheneus were sacred to Hermes, because three springs were there and according to the legend, Hermes was washed in them, after birth, by the nymphs of the mountain.


title: Hermes

text: Furthermore, at Pharae there was a water sacred to Hermes. The name of the spring was Hermes' stream and the fish in it were not caught, being considered sacred to the god.


title: Hermes

text: Sacrifices to Hermes involved honey, cakes, pigs, goats, and lambs. In the city of Tanagra, it was believed that Hermes had been nursed under a wild strawberry tree, the remains of which were held there in the shrine of Hermes Promachus, and in the hills Phene ran three waterways that were sacred to him, because he was believed to have been bathed there at birth.


title: Hermes

text: Hermes' feast was the Hermaea, which was celebrated with sacrifices to the god and with athletics and gymnastics, possibly having been established in the 6th century BC, but no documentation on the festival before the 4th century BC survives. However, Plato said that Socrates attended a Hermaea. Of all the festivals involving Greek games, these were the most like initiations because participation in them was restricted to young boys and excluded adults.


title: Hermes

text: Hermes' epithet "Argeïphontes" (; ), meaning "slayer of Argus", recalls the slaying of the hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes by the messenger god. Argus was watching over the heifer-nymph Io in the sanctuary of Queen Hera, herself in Argos. Hermes placed a charm on Argus' eyes with the caduceus to cause the giant to sleep, after which he slew the giant. The eyes were then put into the tail of the peacock, a symbol of the goddess Hera.


title: Hermes

text: Hermes was called "Cyllenian" (), because according to some myths he was born at the Mount Cyllene, and nursed by the Oread nymph Cyllene.


title: Hermes

text: In ancient Greek culture, "kriophoros" () or "criophorus", the "ram-bearer," is a figure that commemorates the solemn sacrifice of a ram. It becomes an epithet of Hermes.


title: Hermes

text: The chief office of the god was as messenger. Explicitly, at least in sources of classical writings, of Euripides' "Electra" and "Iphigenia in Aulis" and in Epictetus' "Discourses". Hermes ("Diactoros", "Angelos") the messenger, is in fact only seen in this role, for Zeus, from within the pages of the "Odyssey". The messenger divine and herald of the Gods, he wears the gifts from his father, the petasos and talaria.


title: Hermes

text: No cult to Hermes Dolios existed in Attica, and so this form of Hermes seems to have existed in speech only.


title: Hermes

text: Hermes Dolio is ambiguous. According to prominent folklorist Yeleazar Meletinsky, Hermes is a deified trickster and master of thieves ("a plunderer, a cattle-raider, a night-watching" in the "Homeric Hymn to Hermes") and deception (Euripides) and (possibly evil) tricks and trickeries, crafty (from "lit". god of craft), the cheat, the god of stealth. He is also known as the friendliest to man, cunning, treacherous, and a schemer.


title: Hermes

text: Hermes is "amoral" like a baby. Zeus sent Hermes as a teacher to humanity to teach them knowledge of and value of justice and to improve inter-personal relationships ("bonding between mortals").


title: Hermes

text: Considered to have a mastery of rhetorical persuasion and "special pleading", the god typically has nocturnal "". Hermes knows the boundaries and crosses the borders of them to confuse their definition.


title: Hermes

text: In the Lang translation of the "Homeric Hymn to Hermes", the god after being born is described as a "robber", "a captain of raiders", and a "thief of the gates".


title: Hermes

text: According to the late Jungian psychotherapist López-Pedraza, everything Hermes thieves, he later sacrifices to the gods.


title: Hermes

text: Homer and Hesiod portrayed Hermes as the author of skilled or deceptive acts and also as a benefactor of mortals. In the "Iliad", he is called "the bringer of good luck", "guide and guardian", and "excellent in all the tricks". He was a divine ally of the Greeks against the Trojans. However, he did protect Priam when he went to the Greek camp to retrieve the body of his son Hector and accompanied them back to Troy.


title: Hermes

text: He also rescued Ares from a brazen vessel where he had been imprisoned by Otus and Ephialtes. In the "Odyssey", Hermes helps his great-grand son, the protagonist Odysseus, by informing him about the fate of his companions, who were turned into animals by the power of Circe. Hermes instructed Odysseus to protect himself by chewing a magic herb; he also told Calypso of Zeus' order to free Odysseus from her island to allow him to continue his journey back home. When Odysseus killed the suitors of his wife, Hermes led their souls to Hades. In "The Works and Days", when Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create Pandora to disgrace humanity by punishing Prometheus's act of giving fire to man, every god gave her a gift, and Hermes' gifts were lies, seductive words, and a dubious character. Hermes was then instructed to take her as wife to Epimetheus.


title: Hermes

text: The "Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes", which tells the story of the god's birth and his subsequent theft of Apollo's sacred cattle, invokes him as the one "of many shifts ("polytropos"), blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods." The word "polutropos" ("of many shifts, turning many ways, of many devices, ingenious, or much wandering") is also used to describe Odysseus in the first line of the "Odyssey". In addition to the chelys lyre, Hermes was believed to have invented many types of racing and the sport of wrestling, and therefore was a patron of athletes.


title: Hermes

text: Aeschylus wrote in "The Eumenides" that Hermes helped Orestes kill Clytemnestra under a false identity and other stratagems, and also said that he was the god of searches, and those who seek things lost or stolen. In "Philoctetes", Sophocles invokes Hermes when Odysseus needs to convince Philoctetes to join the Trojan War on the side of the Greeks, and in Euripides' "Rhesus" Hermes helps Dolon spy on the Greek navy.


title: Hermes

text: Aesop featured him in several of his fables, as ruler of the gate of prophetic dreams, as the god of athletes, of edible roots, and of hospitality. He also said that Hermes had assigned each person his share of intelligence.


title: Hermes

text: Several writers of the Hellenistic period expanded the list of Hermes's achievements. Callimachus said that Hermes disguised himself as a Cyclops to scare the Oceanids and was disobedient to his mother. One of the Orphic Hymns Khthonios is dedicated to Hermes, indicating that he was also a god of the underworld. Aeschylus had called him by this epithet several times. Another is the Orphic Hymn to Hermes, where his association with the athletic games held is mystic in tone.


title: Hermes

text: Phlegon of Tralles said he was invoked to ward off ghosts, and Apollodorus reports several events involving Hermes. According to Apollodorus, Hermes participated in the Gigantomachy in defense of Olympus; was given the task of bringing baby Dionysus to be cared for by Ino and Athamas and later took him to be cared for by the Nysan nymphs, later called the Hyades; lead Hera, Athena and Aphrodite to Paris to be judged by him in a beauty contest; favored the young Hercules by giving him a sword when he finished his education; and aided Perseus in fetching the head of the Gorgon Medusa.


title: Hermes

text: Anyte of Tegea of the 3rd century BC, in the translation by Richard Aldington, wrote, I Hermes stand here at the crossroads by the wind beaten orchard, near the hoary grey coast; and I keep a resting place for weary men. And the cool stainless spring gushes out.


title: Hermes

text: According to Hyginus' "Fabula", Pan, the Greek god of nature, shepherds and flocks, is the son of Hermes through the nymph Dryope. It is likely that the worship of Hermes himself actually originated as an aspect of Pan as the god of boundaries, which could explain their association as parent and child in Hyginus. In other sources, the god Priapus is understood as a son of Hermes.


title: Hermes

text: According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Autolycus, the Prince of Thieves, was a son of Hermes and Chione, making Hermes a great-grandfather of Odysseus.


title: Hermes

text: Once, Hermes chased either Persephone or Hecate with the aim to rape her; but the goddess snored or roared in anger, frightening him off so that he desisted, hence her earning the name "Brimo" ("angry").


title: Hermes

text: Hermes also loved young men in pederastic relationships where he bestowed and/or taught something related to combat, athletics, herding, poetry and music. Photius wrote that Polydeuces (Pollux), one of the Dioscuri, was a lover of Hermes, to whom he gifted the Thessalian horse Dotor. Amphion became a great singer and musician after his lover Hermes taught him to play and gave him a golden lyre. Crocus was said to be a beloved of Hermes and was accidentally killed by the god in a game of discus when he unexpectedly stood up; as the unfortunate youth's blood dripped on the soil, the saffron flower came to be. Perseus received the divine items (talaria, petasos, and the helm of darkness) from Hermes because he loved him. And Daphnis, a Sicilian shepherd who was said to be the inventor of pastoral poetry, is said to be a son or sometimes "eromenos" of Hermes.


title: Hermes

text: For Carl Jung, Hermes's role as messenger between realms and as guide to the underworld made him the god of the unconscious, the mediator between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind, and the guide for inner journeys.


title: Hermes

text: Jung considered the gods Thoth and Hermes to be counterparts. In Jungian psychology especially, Hermes is seen as relevant to study of the phenomenon of synchronicity (together with Pan and Dionysus):


title: Hermes

text: He is identified by some with the archetype of healer, as the ancient Greeks ascribed healing magic to him.


title: Hermes

text: In the context of abnormal psychology Samuels (1986) states that Jung considers Hermes the archetype for narcissistic disorder; however, he lends the disorder a "positive" (beneficious) aspect, and represents both the good and bad of narcissism.


title: Hermes

text: For López-Pedraza, Hermes is the protector of psychotherapy. For McNeely, Hermes is a god of the healing arts.


title: Hermes

text: According to Christopher Booker, all the roles Hermes held in ancient Greek thought all considered reveals Hermes to be a guide or observer of transition.


title: Mad Men

text: Mad Men is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Its fictional time frame runs from March 1960 to November 1970.


title: Mad Men

text: "Mad Men" begins at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, and continues at the new firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (later named Sterling Cooper & Partners) near the Time-Life Building at 1271 Sixth Avenue. According to the pilot episode, the phrase "Mad men" was a slang term coined in the 1950s by advertisers working on Madison Avenue to refer to themselves, "Mad" being short for "Madison" (in reality, the only documented use of the phrase from that time may have been in the late-1950s writings of James Kelly, an advertising executive and writer).


title: Mad Men

text: The series's main character is the charismatic advertising executive Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), who is initially the talented creative director at Sterling Cooper. He is erratic and mysterious but is widely regarded throughout the advertising world as a genius; some of the most famous advertisement campaigns in history are shown to be his creations. Later, Don becomes a founding partner at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce but begins a struggle as his highly calculated identity falls into a period of decline. The plot of the show tracks the people in his personal and professional lives. As the series progresses, it depicts the changing moods and social mores of the United States throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.


title: Mad Men

text: "Mad Men" received widespread critical acclaim for its writing, acting, directing, visual style and historical authenticity; it won many awards, including 16 Emmys and five Golden Globes. The show was also the first basic cable series to receive the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, winning the award each year of its first four seasons (2008–2011). It is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time and as part of the early 21st century Golden Age of Television.


title: Mad Men

text: In 2000, while working as a staff writer for "Becker", Matthew Weiner wrote the first draft as a spec script for the pilot of what would later be called "Mad Men". Television showrunner David Chase recruited Weiner to work as a writer on his HBO series "The Sopranos" after reading the pilot script in 2002. "It was lively, and it had something new to say," Chase said. "Here was someone [Weiner] who had written a story about advertising in the 1960s, and was looking at recent American history through that prism."


title: Mad Men

text: Weiner and his representatives at Industry Entertainment and ICM tried to sell the pilot script to HBO, which expressed an interest, but insisted that David Chase be named executive producer. Chase declined, despite his enthusiasm for Weiner's writing and the pilot script. HBO CEO Richard Plepler later became a fan of the show and congratulated AMC on their success with it. In 2017 he named passing on "Mad Men" as his biggest regret from his time at HBO, calling it "inexcusable" and attributing the decision to "hubris."


title: Mad Men

text: Weiner then moved on to Showtime, which also passed. Lacking a suitable network buyer, they tabled sales efforts until years later, when a talent manager on Weiner's team, Ira Liss, pitched the series to AMC's Vice President of Development, Christina Wayne. "The Sopranos" was completing its final season then, and the cable network happened to be getting into the market for new series programming. "The network was looking for distinction in launching its first original series," according to AMC Networks president Ed Carroll, "and we took a bet that quality would win out over formulaic mass appeal."


title: Mad Men

text: Weiner listed Alfred Hitchcock as a major influence on the visual style of the series, especially the film "North by Northwest." He also was influenced by director Wong Kar-wai in the music, mise en scène, and editorial style. Weiner noted in an interview that "M*A*S*H" and "Happy Days", two television shows produced in the 1970s about the 1950s, provided a "touchstone for culture" and a way to "remind people that they have a misconception about the past, any past." He also said that ""Mad Men" would have been some sort of crisp, soapy version of "The West Wing" if not for "The Sopranos"." Peggy's "psychic scar for the entire show, after giving away that baby," Weiner said, is "the kind of thing that would have never occurred to me before I was on "The Sopranos"."


title: Mad Men

text: Tim Hunter, the director of a half-dozen episodes from the show's first two seasons, called "Mad Men" a "very well-run show." He said:


title: Mad Men

text: The pilot episode was shot at Silvercup Studios in New York City and various locations around the city; subsequent episodes were filmed at Los Angeles Center Studios. It is available in high definition for showing on AMC HD and on video-on-demand services available from various cable affiliates.


title: Mad Men

text: The writers, including Weiner, amassed volumes of research on the period in which "Mad Men" takes place so as to make most aspects of the series—including detailed set design, costume design, and props—historically accurate, producing an authentic visual style that garnered critical praise. On the scenes featuring smoking, Weiner stated: "Doing this show without smoking would've been a joke. It would've been sanitary and it would've been phony." Each episode had a budget between US$2–2.5 million; the pilot episode's budget was over $3 million.


title: Mad Men

text: Weiner collaborated with cinematographer Phil Abraham and production designers Robert Shaw (who worked on the pilot only) and Dan Bishop to develop a visual style that was "influenced more by cinema than television." Alan Taylor, a veteran director of "The Sopranos", directed the pilot and also helped establish the series's visual tone. To cast an "air of mystery" around Don Draper, Taylor tended to shoot from behind him or would frame him partially obscured. Many scenes set at Sterling Cooper were shot lower-than-eyeline to incorporate the ceilings into the composition of frame; this reflects the photography, graphic design and architecture of the period. Taylor felt that neither steadicam nor handheld camera work would be appropriate to the "visual grammar of that time, and that aesthetic didn't mesh with [their] classic approach"—accordingly, the sets were designed to be practical for dolly work.


title: Mad Men

text: According to a 2011 Miller Tabak + Company estimate published in "Barron's", Lions Gate Entertainment received an estimated $2.71 million from AMC for each episode, a little less than the $2.84 million each episode costs to produce.


title: Mad Men

text: In March 2011, after negotiations between the network and the series's creator, AMC picked up "Mad Men" for a fifth season, which premiered on March 25, 2012. Weiner reportedly signed a $30 million contract, which would keep him at the helm of the show for three more seasons. A couple of weeks later, a "Marie Claire" interview with January Jones was published, noting the limits to that financial success when it comes to the actors: "We don't get paid very much on the show and that's well-documented. On the other hand, when you do television you have a steady paycheck each week, so that's nice."


title: Mad Men

text: Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce wrote that sales from home video and iTunes could amount to $100 million in revenue during the show's expected seven-year run, with international syndication sales bringing in an additional estimated $700,000 per episode. That does not include the $71 to $100 million estimated to come from a Netflix streaming video deal announced in April 2011.


title: Mad Men

text: The opening title sequence features credits superimposed over a graphic animation of a businessman falling from a height, surrounded by skyscrapers with reflections of period advertising posters and billboards, accompanied by a short edit of the instrumental "A Beautiful Mine" by RJD2. The businessman appears as a black-and-white silhouette. The titles, created by production house Imaginary Forces, pay homage to graphic designer Saul Bass's skyscraper-filled opening titles for Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" (1959) and falling man movie poster for "Vertigo" (1958); Weiner has listed Hitchcock as a major influence on the visual style of the series. In a 2010 issue of "TV Guide", the show's opening title sequence ranked No. 9 on a list of TV's top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.


title: Mad Men

text: David Carbonara composed the original score for the series. "Mad Men – Original Score Vol. 1" was released on January 13, 2009.


title: Mad Men

text: At the end of almost every episode, the show either fades to black or smash cuts to black as period music, or a theme by series composer David Carbonara, plays during the ending credits; at least one episode ends with silence or ambient sounds. A few episodes have ended with more recent popular music, or with a diegetic song dissolving into the credits music. Apple Corps authorized the use of The Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows" for the Season 5 episode "Lady Lazarus", and the same track was used over the closing credits. Lionsgate, which produces "Mad Men", paid $250,000 for the use of the song in the episode. Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice It's All Right" ended the last episode of Season 1.


title: Mad Men

text: In addition to creating the series, Matthew Weiner was the show runner, head writer, and an executive producer; he contributed to each episode through writing or co-writing the scripts, casting various roles, and approving costume and set designs. He was notorious for being selective about all aspects of the series, and maintained a high level of secrecy about production details. Tom Palmer served as a co-executive producer and writer on the first season. Scott Hornbacher (who later became an executive producer), Todd London, Lisa Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, and Maria Jacquemetton were producers on the first season. Palmer, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, and Maria Jacquemetton were also writers on the first season. Bridget Bedard, Chris Provenzano, and writer's assistant Robin Veith completed the first-season writing team.


title: Mad Men

text: Lisa Albert, Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton returned as supervising producers for the second season. Veith also returned and was promoted to staff writer. Hornbacher replaced Palmer as co-executive producer for the second season. Consulting producers David Isaacs, Marti Noxon, Rick Cleveland, and Jane Anderson joined the crew for the second season. Weiner, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Veith, Noxon, Cleveland, and Anderson were all writers for the second season. New writer's assistant Kater Gordon was the season's other writer. Isaacs, Cleveland, and Anderson left the crew at the end of the second season.


title: Mad Men

text: Albert remained a supervising producer for the third season but Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton became consulting producers. Hornbacher was promoted again, this time to executive producer. Veith returned as a story editor and Gordon became a staff writer. Noxon remained a consulting producer and was joined by new consulting producer Frank Pierson. Dahvi Waller joined the crew as a co-producer. Weiner, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Veith, Noxon, and Waller were all writers for the third season. New writer's assistant Erin Levy, executive story editor Cathryn Humphris, script co-ordinator Brett Johnson and freelance writer Andrew Colville completed the third season writing staff.


title: Mad Men

text: Alan Taylor, Phil Abraham, Jennifer Getzinger, Lesli Linka Glatter, Tim Hunter, Andrew Bernstein, and Michael Uppendahl were regular directors for the series. Matthew Weiner directed each of the season finales. Cast members John Slattery, Jared Harris and Jon Hamm also directed episodes.


title: Mad Men

text: As of the third season, seven of the nine writers for the show were women, in contrast to Writers Guild of America 2006 statistics that showed male writers outnumbered female writers by 2 to 1. As Maria Jacquemetton noted:


title: Mad Men

text: "Mad Men" focuses mostly on Don Draper, although it features an ensemble cast representing several segments of society in 1960s New York. "Mad Men" places emphasis on recollective progression as a means of revealing the characters' past.


title: Mad Men

text: Don Draper (Jon Hamm): Draper is the series' main protagonist. He is the creative director and junior partner of Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency and, as of the sixth season, a partner of Sterling Cooper & Partners. He is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking executive with a shadowy past who has achieved success in advertising. At the start of the series, Don is married to Elizabeth "Betty" Draper, with whom he has three children: Sally, Bobby, and Gene. Don keeps many secrets from Betty, including a long history of infidelity. Despite Don's best efforts, Betty gradually starts catching on, and when she learns about both his cheating and secret past, it leads to their separation and eventual divorce. It is gradually revealed over several seasons that Draper's real name is Richard "Dick" Whitman. During the Korean War, Whitman assumed the identity of his CO, Lieutenant Don Draper, who was killed in front of Whitman when their entire unit was ambushed. In the ensuing chaos, Whitman dropped his lit lighter on some fuel which caused some fuel drums to explode, killing Draper and injuring Whitman. Draper was due to be sent home, so Whitman found a way to escape his impoverished, dysfunctional family by switching dog tags with him.


title: Mad Men

text: Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss): Peggy rises from being Draper's secretary to being a copywriter with her own office. She becomes pregnant with Pete Campbell's child, a pregnancy that neither she nor her family or co-workers seem to notice, until she goes to the emergency room due to illness, and they tell her she is in labor. Campbell is unaware of her pregnancy until the end of Season 2, when Peggy tells him that she gave the baby up for adoption. In Season 3, she is approached by Duck Phillips to leave Sterling Cooper, but turns him down, despite the fact that his persistence leads to a romantic relationship. While he rarely acknowledges it, Don appreciates Peggy's abilities, leading him to choose her to go with him to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. She is given more freedom to come up with her own creative advertising ideas, with Don always pushing her to be better. During Season 5, Peggy feels increasingly unappreciated and patronized by Draper. In the episode "The Other Woman" she leaves SCDP to accept an offer to become head copywriter at Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough, though the agency merges with SCDP in Season 6, which once again places her under Don's leadership. In the final season, she transitions to the McCann Erickson agency and eventually finds her true feelings for Stan Rizzo.


title: Mad Men

text: Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser): A young, ambitious account executive from an old New York family with connections and a privileged background. Often displaying recurring lapses in experience and judgement, his ruthless climb to the top causes him to attempt to blackmail Don with the Dick Whitman information he has learned, but it does not work. Pete and Don are antagonistic some of the time, but later develop a grudging respect for each other, culminating in Don's approaching Pete over Ken Cosgrove when forming a new agency. Campbell and his wife, Trudy (Alison Brie), were unable to conceive a child early in their marriage, and he only learned of his child with Peggy at the Season 2 finale. He and Trudy do conceive a daughter, Tammy, late in Season 4. At the end of Season 3, dissatisfied with his treatment at Sterling Cooper regarding a promotion, he secretly plans to leave the firm. Unaware of this, Don approaches Pete with an offer to join his new firm as long as Pete brings accounts worth $8 million in billings. Pete decides to join Don, with the condition that he be made a partner, though his surname does not appear in the new firm's name (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce). Pete is one of the few characters in the show who does not smoke cigarettes, though he is seen smoking marijuana on one occasion. He looks up to Don in many ways, as both cheat on their wives and are not above manipulating or blackmailing. While Pete and Trudy separate in Season 6 after another one of his affairs, the two reconcile at the end of the series as he takes a lucrative offer with Learjet in Wichita, Kansas.


title: Mad Men

text: Betty Draper (January Jones): Don Draper's wife and mother of their three children: Sally, Bobby, and Eugene Scott. Raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, Pennsylvania and a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she met Don when she was a model in Manhattan and married him soon thereafter. At the start of the series, they have been married for seven years (since 1953) and live in Ossining, New York. Over the course of the first two seasons, Betty gradually becomes aware of her husband's womanizing. After a brief separation, Betty allows Don to return home when she learns she is pregnant with their third child, but not before having a one-night stand of her own. She leaves for Reno at the end of Season 3, in December 1963, with the intention of divorcing Don. At the start of Season 4, in November 1964, she has divorced Don and married Henry Francis. She and her children and new husband move to Rye. Betty's relationship with her children, particularly Sally, is often strained. At the end of Season 7, Betty learns that she has an advanced stage of lung cancer and is given six months to a year to live, even with aggressive treatment. She quickly accepts that her life will soon be over and makes plans for her funeral and her children's future care.


title: Mad Men

text: Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks): Joan is the office manager and head of the secretarial pool at Sterling Cooper. She had a long-term affair with Roger Sterling until his two heart attacks (Season 1) caused him to end the relationship. In Season 2, she becomes engaged to Dr. Greg Harris (Samuel Page), and by Season 3, they are married and at his request she quits her job at Sterling Cooper. Their marriage is tested by her growing desire to continue her career despite his opposition, but his lack of skill as a surgeon and consequent difficulties securing work force her to return to work at a department store, prompting her to call Roger to ask for his help in finding an office job. Because of her invaluable organizational and managerial skills, she is hired for the new agency formed by Don, Roger, Lane, and Bert. Meanwhile, Greg's desire to further his career as a surgeon leads him to obtain a commission in the Army, and early in Season 4 he is sent to basic training and then to Vietnam. While her husband is deployed, she and Roger have one sexual encounter, which results in her becoming pregnant. She initially decides to terminate the pregnancy, but changes her mind and gives birth shortly before the beginning of Season 5, with her husband unaware that he is not the father. Greg returns from Vietnam during Season 5, but he and Joan separate, after he announces to her that he is returning to Vietnam for another tour of duty regardless of her feelings on the matter, and are divorced by the end of the season. By the close of Season 5, Joan has become a junior partner at SCDP in exchange for agreeing to sleep with a Jaguar executive to help land the account, which leads to conflict with Don in the Season 6, during which he ends the account with Jaguar just before SCDP makes a public offering. She is furious over the loss of potential earnings and the fact that her sacrifice has been for nothing. At the close of the series, she is subject to harassment by McCann executives, agrees to a buyout of her partnership stake, and starts a production company called Holloway Harris.


title: Mad Men

text: Roger Sterling (John Slattery); recurring Season 1, regular Seasons 2–7: Roger is one of the two senior partners of Sterling Cooper and former mentor to Don Draper. His father founded the firm with Bertram Cooper, hence his name comes before Cooper's in the firm's title. A picture in Cooper's office shows Roger as a child alongside Cooper as a young adult. In Season 2, Bertram Cooper mentions that "the late Mrs. Cooper" introduced Sterling to his wife, Mona, whom Sterling is in the process of divorcing in favor of Don's former secretary, 20-year-old Jane. Sterling, a World War II Navy veteran, was a notorious womanizer (living like he was "on shore leave") until two heart attacks changed his perspective, although they did not affect his drinking or smoking habits, which remained excessive. His experiences in the Pacific theater led to him harboring a strong contempt for the Japanese and refuses to do business with them as seen in Season 4. Prior to his marriage to Jane, Roger had a long affair with Joan. In Season 4, he and Joan have a brief romantic encounter and Joan becomes pregnant. It is revealed in Season 3 that sometime in the early-1950s, when Don was a salesman at a furrier, and eager to break into advertising, Roger met him and through that connection Don was hired at Sterling Cooper. Season 4 has Roger less involved with the day-to-day activities at SCDP than he was at Sterling Cooper. His primary function is to manage the Lucky Strike account, which is responsible for over half of SCDP's billings. In the episode "Chinese Wall", it's revealed that Lucky Strike is moving its account to a rival agency, forcing a dramatic downsizing of the firm. During Season 5, Roger is given new accounts to handle. He refocuses his efforts and lands a big account with Chevrolet Motor Company. He offers to financially support his son but Joan does not believe that he is reliable. By the end of the sixth season she agrees to let Roger into Kevin's life but not hers. At the close of the series, Roger indicates to her that half of his estate will go to Kevin in his will. Roger eventually marries Megan Draper's mother, Marie and their honeymoon in Paris is part of the final montage in the series.


title: Mad Men

text: Kenneth "Ken" Cosgrove (Aaron Staton): A young account executive originally from Vermont. Outside the office, Ken is an aspiring author who had a short story published in "The Atlantic", which is a source of some envy by his co-workers, particularly the competitive Paul Kinsey and jealous Pete Campbell. According to his bio in "The Atlantic", Ken attended Columbia University. His wife is Cynthia. He has one admirer, art director Salvatore "Sal" Romano, who secretly has a crush on him. Ken was promoted in the beginning of Season 3 to Account Director, a role he shared with Pete Campbell. Later on, the more easy-going Ken is promoted over the more ambitious Campbell to Senior Vice President of Account Services. However, at the end of Season 3, Draper and Sterling choose Pete over Ken for their new agency. During Season 4, Ken joins SCDP after working for McCann Erickson, which had bought Sterling Cooper, and BBD&O. When Pete learns of Ken's return, he is initially upset with Lane Pryce for not telling him, since Pryce had authorized Ken's previous promotion over Pete. However, when Ken agrees to serve under Pete as accounts manager at SCDP, the two reconcile over lunch and Pete comes to realize that Ken is a practical choice to help bring new business to the firm. In Season 5 it is discovered that Ken secretly writes science fiction short stories. In Season 6, he is wounded in the eye during a hunting accident with SCDP clients, Chevrolet. By Season 7, he shows increased stress over the state of the agency, and with the acquisition of SC&P by McCann Erickson, Ken is fired. However, he assumes his father-in-law's position at Dow Chemical and thus becomes a client for the remainder of the series run.


title: Mad Men

text: Harold "Harry" Crane (Rich Sommer): A bespectacled media buyer and head of Sterling Cooper's television department, which is created at Harry's initiative. Unlike his mostly Ivy League fellows, Harry went to the University of Wisconsin. Harry joins his colleagues in drinking and flirtations, though he is a dedicated husband and father. However, he does have a drunken one-night stand with Pete's secretary in Season 1, which leads to a brief separation from his wife Jennifer. Although he is well-meaning, Harry has a tendency to make poor decisions and avoid confrontations, which contributes to the dismissal of Sal Romano in Season 3. He is ultimately coerced by Draper and Cooper into joining Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, although he comes to the realization that it is the right move on his own. When Sterling Cooper was in the process of being sold, Harry mistakenly thinks they are considering opening a West Coast office and believes that he would be the person to move to California. Harry later becomes a bit of a braggart, who is overly fond of discussing his Hollywood connections. In Season 5 he has abandoned his faithfulness to his wife as he discusses having affairs while abroad on business and is easily seduced by Paul's Hare Krishna girlfriend Lakshmi in his office. He also becomes increasingly image-conscious and petty, culminating in Season 6 when he explodes at Joan after she fires his secretary Scarlet for falsifying her time card, venting his frustration over her being made partner when he was not. By Season 7, the question of his being named partner is discussed again and endorsed by Jim Cutler, but the sale of SC&P to McCann Erickson eliminates that possibility. He also propositions Megan Draper in exchange for helping promote her acting career, but is rejected.


title: Mad Men

text: Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis); regular Seasons 1–3, guest star Season 5: A creative copywriter and Princeton University alumnus, the bearded, pipe-smoking Paul prides himself on his politically liberal views. Some time before the series began he had a relationship with Joan Holloway which ended badly, largely because Paul talked about it too much. Paul tried, unsuccessfully, to date Peggy soon after she was hired by Sterling Cooper. Through most of the second season, Paul dated Sheila White, an African-American woman from South Orange, New Jersey. They break up while in Oxford, Mississippi, where they had gone as Freedom Riders to oppose segregation in the South. It is a source of pride for Kinsey to live in the low-income, southern section of Montclair, New Jersey; Joan, however, mocks him as a shallow poseur. He is highly competitive, an attribute revealed to have soured a few friendships while he was in college, and which causes friction with Peggy, who quickly proves to be a superior copywriter to him. He is furious upon discovering that Don chose Peggy for the new agency over him. Paul did not appear after the third season finale until he reappeared in the tenth episode of Season 5, revealing himself to Harry as a disciple of Krishna Consciousness. Paul asks Harry to look at a Star Trek script he wrote, which Harry thinks is awful. Harry later realizes that Paul's girlfriend is manipulating him because of his recruiting skills within the Krishna movement, and encourages Paul to follow his dreams. He gives Paul $500 and tells him to get to Los Angeles as soon as possible.


title: Mad Men

text: Salvatore "Sal" Romano (Bryan Batt); regular Seasons 1–3: The Italian-American former art director at Sterling Cooper. Sal is a closeted homosexual. Reluctant to act upon his homosexuality, he twice avoids sexual encounters with men. By 1962, Sal has married Kitty, who seems unaware of Sal's sexual orientation, yet begins to realize that something is amiss in their relationship. Sal's secret crush on Ken Cosgrove comes close to being revealed during a dinner in Sal's apartment. Later, when a recently hired young advertising exec, Kurt, casually announces his homosexuality, Sal remains silent while his fellow co-workers speak disparagingly about Kurt. In the premiere of Season 3, Sal has a brief interrupted homosexual encounter with a hotel employee while in Baltimore, the end of which Don accidentally witnesses. Don, who was in the midst of a heterosexual encounter of his own at the same hotel, finesses this uncomfortable situation through a coded conversation about their current client, London Fog. He suggests the tagline "Limit your exposure". Later in Season 3, Sal rebuffs the sexual advances of Lee Garner Jr., the drunken playboy son of Lucky Strike's founder and a key client. Angered by the rejection, the client demands Sal be removed from the campaign and Roger fires Sal in order to appease the client and keep his $25 million account. In a conversation right after the firing, Don explains the agency cannot risk losing Lucky Strike and implies Sal should have gone along with Garner Jr. At the end of the episode, Sal is seen calling his wife Kitty from a phone booth in an area frequented by gay men cruising for sex. On the phone, Sal explains to Kitty he will be working late that night. Sal never appears again in the series.


title: Mad Men

text: Bertram "Bert" Cooper (Robert Morse); recurring Seasons 1–2, regular Seasons 3–7: The somewhat eccentric senior partner at Sterling Cooper. He leaves the day-to-day running of the firm to Sterling and Draper but is keenly aware of the firm's operations. Bertram is a Republican. He is fascinated by Japanese culture, requiring everybody, including clients, to remove their shoes before walking into his office, which is decorated with Japanese art. He is also a fan of the writings of Ayn Rand. Among his eccentricities, Bert frequently walks through the offices in his socks and intensely dislikes gum-chewing and smoking, an oddity for the time, especially considering Lucky Strike cigarettes is a major client through Season 4. He owns a ranch in Montana and is a widower with no children. Don approaches him about buying back the agency at the end of the third season, which evolves into their forming the new Sterling Cooper firm. In Season 4, Roger Sterling, being a WWII veteran of the Pacific theater, is outraged at the possibility of taking on a Japanese client, Honda. In a heated office meeting with some of the other executives including Peter Campbell, who had the lead, Roger says to Bert, "Why don't we just get Dr. Lyle Evans in here?" and storms out of the room, leaving Peter Campbell dumbfounded, asking, "Who the hell is Dr. Lyle Evans?" Interestingly enough, a few episodes later, a drunk and lonely Don who is pulling an all-nighter at the office with Peggy, stumbles upon an audio tape recording of Roger Sterling's memoirs that reveals that Bert received a war injury to his groin and was castrated by an incompetent doctor, named Lyle Evans. Later in Season 4, in the episode "Blowing Smoke", when the agency is forced to radically downsize its staff following the loss of the Lucky Strike account, Bert tells the others that he is quitting the business. He is not seen for the rest of the season but is back at work at the beginning of Season 5, although without an office. In Episode 10, Pete refers to the men's room as "Cooper's office." Bert's sister Alice is a silent partner in Sterling Cooper. By the sixth season, Bert is increasingly frustrated with Don's erratic behavior and joins the other partners in placing him on a leave of absence. During the seventh season, he agrees to let Don return under an agreed set of stipulations. He dies while watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on television. He appears to Don in two dream sequences following his death.


title: Mad Men

text: Sally Beth Draper (Kiernan Shipka); recurring Seasons 1–3, regular Seasons 4–7: The eldest child of Don and Betty Draper; her relationship with her mother is often strained. Sally is a minor character through the first two seasons but assumes a larger role during the third season as she approaches adolescence. She forms a strong bond with her grandfather, Gene Hofstadt, when he comes to live with the Drapers and is devastated by his sudden death. She also becomes distraught when Don and Betty break the news that they are getting a divorce, reproaching her father for breaking his promise to always be there and accusing her mother of making him leave. She develops a friendship with Glen, a boy who lives down the street from her (and of whom her mother does not approve). Betty is extremely jealous of this relationship and seeks to sabotage it, deciding to move the family to Rye, New York and firing Carla, the housekeeper, when she lets Glen in the house to say goodbye to Sally. In Season 5, Sally is shown to continue her friendship with Glen through phone calls and secret meetings. When Don marries Megan Calvet, Sally establishes a mostly positive relationship with Megan. During the sixth season, Sally is accepted to Miss Porter's School but gets suspended after being caught buying alcohol with a fake ID. In the final season, Sally's disillusion with both of her parents is evident but changes upon the news of Betty's cancer diagnosis.


title: Mad Men

text: Rachel Katz (née Menken) (Maggie Siff); regular Season 1, guest star Seasons 2 and 7: The Jewish head of a department store who comes to Sterling Cooper in search of an advertising agency to revamp her business's image. She is initially cool towards Don Draper, who bristles at her assertive, independent image but they warm to each other and eventually begin an affair. In the course of their affair, Don tells her things he has not shared with Midge Daniels (his previous mistress) or his wife. When Don is blackmailed by Pete Campbell, he comes to Rachel with the suggestion that they run away together to Los Angeles. She reminds him of his duty to his children and questions whether he would want to abandon his children after having grown up without a father. When Don persists, Rachel comes to the realization that he didn't want to run away with her, he simply wanted to run away. Ironically, her calling him a coward and urging him to think more clearly inspires him to persuade Pete to stand down. The relationship seems to collapse from that point on, and Cooper complains to Don about how upset he has made her. Don and Rachel end the affair at some point between the first and second seasons. He encounters her again in Season 2 while out to eat with Bobbie Barrett, finding out that Rachel has moved on and married a man named Tilden Katz. Though it appears that Don is only momentarily shaken by the news of her marriage, several episodes later, after drinking heavily with Roger and Freddie Rumsen, he gives his name as "Tilden Katz" to the bouncer of an underground club Roger is trying to get them into. In Season 7, Don sees Rachel in a vision while auditioning actresses for a fur commercial, but when he attempts to contact her, he learns that Rachel had two children and that she died from leukemia.


title: Mad Men

text: Lane Pryce (Jared Harris); recurring Season 3, regular Seasons 4–5: The English financial officer installed by Sterling Cooper's new British parent company. He first appears in the first episode of Season 3. His role is that of a strict taskmaster who brings spending under control, in particular by cutting out frivolous expenses. His efforts are so successful, he is to be sent to India to enact cost-cutting measures, a move which Pryce is not looking forward to after having settled in with his wife and child in New York. An unfortunate accident at work handicaps his replacement, thus allowing Pryce to keep his current position. He warms to American culture, and foresees some form of cultural and societal changes in American race relations. When the British parent company is sold at the end of Season 3, Pryce realizes he has become expendable and negotiates to become a founding partner in the new agency that Don Draper, Bert Cooper and Roger Sterling want to form. At Draper's suggestion, Pryce frees Sterling, Cooper, and Draper from their contractual non-compete clauses by firing them, then is fired himself, enabling the four of them to start their own firm. When hard times hit SCDP after Lucky Strike, their largest client, leaves them in Season 4, Pryce liquidates his portfolio in order to pay his share of the cash infusion required by the bank as collateral for a loan that keeps SCDP afloat. His finances already tight, he faces a crisis when the British Inland Revenue demand immediate payment of back taxes on the gain from the sale of his portfolio in Season 5. In order to pay the debt, Pryce secretly negotiates a $50,000 line of credit on behalf of the firm and announces to the partners that SCDP has a $50,000 profit and is able to pay bonuses. In anticipation of the bonus, Pryce forges Draper's signature on an early bonus check to himself, and views it as a 13-day loan which will be made good once the bonuses are paid. However, the partners decide to forgo their bonuses despite Pryce's pleading. In the penultimate episode of Season 5, Cooper discovers the canceled check and confronts Draper, who in turn confronts Pryce, demanding his resignation. That weekend, Pryce types out a resignation letter and hangs himself in his office.


title: Mad Men

text: Megan Draper (née Calvet) (Jessica Paré); recurring Season 4, regular Seasons 5–7: Don's wife (as of the beginning of Season 5) and a junior copy writer at SCDP. Initially Megan is a receptionist at SCDP, but following the death of Miss Blankenship, she takes over as Don Draper's secretary. In the Season 4 finale, Don takes Megan on a trip to California to take care of his kids. In spite of being involved with Faye Miller, a marketing research consultant who works with SCDP, he proposes marriage to Megan and she accepts. In the episode "Lady Lazarus," she leaves the firm to pursue her dream of acting, and (with the help of Don) lands her first acting gig in one of SCDP's commercials by the Season 5 finale. Don seems to be more honest with Megan than he was with Betty, apparently telling Megan about his true identity between Seasons 4 and 5. At the same time, he retains some of those possessive qualities he displayed during his previous marriage, although Megan is more stubborn and combative than Betty. Megan relocates permanently to California to pursue her acting career and she and Don divorce during Season 7. Megan is originally from Montreal, and French is her first language.


title: Mad Men

text: Stan Rizzo (Jay R. Ferguson); recurring Season 4, regular Seasons 5–7: The art director at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Before coming to the company, he worked for Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 Presidential campaign. He and Peggy are often at odds with each other due to his abrasive attitude, although the two later develop a strong working relationship after Peggy challenges Stan over working in the nude for a campaign, which Stan gruffly concedes to her. Stan is one of the few members of the SCDP creative department who survive the staff cuts. He makes the transition to McCann Erickson in Season 7 and tells Peggy of his love for her at the conclusion of the series, which Peggy reciprocates.


title: Mad Men

text: Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley); recurring Seasons 3–4, regular Seasons 5–7: A political adviser with close connections to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the Republican Party, it is later revealed that he serves as the Director of Public Relations and Research in the Governor's Office. He is instantly infatuated with the six-months-pregnant Betty Draper when he meets her at the Sterlings' Kentucky Derby party as she is waiting by the women's restroom. Later, he is called upon by Betty Draper and some of her friends to use his influence to save a local reservoir, and he and Betty develop a personal connection. Betty reciprocates Henry's attention because she increasingly feels no connection with Don due to his non-stop infidelities, lies over his true identity, and his dismissive and sometimes verbally abusive attitude towards her. After the death of Betty's beloved father, the much older Henry also serves as a replacement father-figure for her. Henry and Betty have only a few brief and furtive meetings before Henry proposes marriage in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. Season 3 ends with the two of them on a plane with baby Gene, presumably flying to Reno so Betty can obtain a quick divorce from Don. At the start of Season 4, we see that Henry and Betty have married and Henry has rather uncomfortably taken up residence in the Drapers' house, living with Betty and her three children and paying rent to Don. He tries to soothe Betty as she continues to react angrily to Don and his irresponsibility towards the children, but gets more fed up over time. Betty, on her part, feels unaccepted by Henry's family, especially when she is unable to control Sally during a family visit to Henry's mother's house. At the end of Season 4, they decide to move to Rye, NY. Their relationship during Season 5 seems to be more affectionate, though Henry still periodically loses his temper with Betty. The news of Betty's cancer in Season 7 devastates him and despite her desire to keep the illness from the children, Henry informs Sally of her mother's condition.


title: Mad Men

text: Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm); recurring Seasons 4–5, regular Seasons 6–7: A self-proclaimed rival of Don Draper in the advertising world, his agency—Cutler Gleason and Chaough (CGC)—was in competition with SCDP for an account with Honda. Don tricked Ted into making an expensive presentation to Honda executives, which backfired on Ted as he violated Honda's presentation rules (no finished work or commercials allowed at the presentation). Though the two agencies are comparable in size, he seems obsessed with competing against Don. Ted also tried to woo Pete Campbell over to his agency. After Don writes his "New York Times" ad about dropping business with cigarette companies, Ted makes a prank call to Don pretending to be Robert F. Kennedy. When he returns in Season 5 to recruit Peggy to leave SCDP and join his advertising firm, he remains very confident but is much less obnoxious than in his previous appearances; he does not indulge his typical dislike and jealousy of Don to Peggy, and that helps her decide to accept his offer, which in the season finale has him assigning her a huge amount of material involving an account for cigarettes aimed at female consumers. During Season 6, Ted and Don impulsively decide to merge their smaller firms so as to compete with the larger ones; however, this leads to numerous small struggles for power between them. In the Season 6 finale, Ted moves to a California SC&P office to have a "new start" after a short-lived affair with Peggy. He returns in Season 7 after the McCann purchase and settles into the culture of the firm.


title: Mad Men

text: Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman); recurring Season 5, regular Seasons 6–7: First appearing in the episode "Tea Leaves" (Season 5, Episode 3), Michael is hired as a part-time copywriter by Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. He is initially hired to service the Mohawk account, and proves himself to be both prolific and innovative. He quickly becomes an essential part of the creative team and surpasses Peggy Olson midway through the season as the firm's most productive writer, while Peggy becomes mired in the Heinz story arc. Ginsberg is an idiosyncratic, socially awkward character who tends to speak his mind, which can be both a help and hindrance to him. Indeed, his position at the firm is threatened at times, including at his interview, when Peggy decides not to employ him for fear of his being too extroverted for Don's tastes. However, this decision is reversed by Roger, who has already told Mohawk that they have taken him on. As the firm's only Jewish copywriter, Roger uses this to his advantage to help Jewish clients, like Manischewitz. His role at SCDP becomes more integral after Peggy leaves the agency, though he commands almost none of the respect and support from Don that she did. His paranoia about the newly installed computer in the office drives him insane, eventually cutting off his own nipple as a gift to Peggy; he is then taken to a psychiatric hospital.


title: Mad Men

text: Robert "Bobby" Draper (Mason Vale Cotton; previously Maxwell Huckabee, Aaron Hart, and Jared Gilmore) recurring Seasons 1–5; regular Seasons 6–7: The middle child of Don and Betty Draper. He was referred to by his mother Betty as a "little liar." Bobby was mentioned as being 5 years old in the Season 2 episode "The Mountain King," making his birthdate between October 1956 and September 1957. Despite not having many story lines during the series, Bobby is shown to be affected by his parents' divorce but grows fond of Don's and Betty's new spouses, Megan and Henry, respectively. In Season 6, he expresses sympathy towards Black people just after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and fears Henry might be shot. By Season 7, Bobby grows troubled over the increased arguments between Betty and Henry.


title: Mad Men

text: "Mad Men" depicts parts of American society of the 1960s, including cigarette smoking, drinking, sexism, feminism, adultery, homophobia, antisemitism and racism. Themes of alienation, social mobility and ruthlessness set the tone of the show. MSNBC noted that the series "mostly remains disconnected from the outside world, so the politics and cultural trends of the time are illustrated through people and their lives, not broad, sweeping arguments".


title: Mad Men

text: According to Weiner, he chose the 1960s because:[E]very time I would try and find something interesting that I wanted to do, it happened in 1960. It will blow your mind if you look at the year on the almanac. And it's not just the election [of JFK]. The pill came out in March 1960, that's really what I wanted it to be around.… That's the largest change in the entire world. Seriously, it's just astounding. Especially if you look at the movies from the 50s. Once it was acceptable to talk about this idea that teenagers were having sex, which they have been doing, obviously, since time immemorial, there were all these movies like "Blue Denim" and "Peyton Place".… [T]he central tension in every movie that does not take place on the battlefield is about a girl getting pregnant. So all of a sudden that entire issue [of pregnancy] has been removed from society. That was what I was interested in in 1960.


title: Mad Men

text: Television commentators have noted the series's study of identity. This theme is explored most candidly through Don Draper's identity fraud during the Korean War, in which he takes on an officer's name to desert the army. Tim Goodman considers identity to be the show's leitmotiv, calling Don Draper "a man who's been living a lie for a long time. He's built to be a loner. And over the course of three seasons we've watched him carry this existential angst through a fairy-tale life of his own creation." As noted by "Gawker":Not only is the agency of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in the business of spinning them—or at least warping the truth—to sell product, but the main character, Don Draper, is built on a lie. Just like one of his campaigns, his whole identity is a sweet fabrication, a kind of candy floss spun out of opportunity, innuendo, and straight-up falsehood."The New Republic" writer Ruth Franklin said that "The show's method is to take us behind the scenes of the branding of American icons—Lucky Strike cigarettes, Hilton hotels, Life cereal—to show us not how the products themselves were created, but how their 'very sexy…very magical' images were dreamed up." She went on to say that, "In this way, we are all Don Drapers, obsessed with selling an image rather than tending to what lies underneath. Draper's fatal flaw is his lack of psychological awareness: He is at once perfectly tuned into the desires of America and entirely out of touch with his own character." One reviewer said that "Identity is a key theme in "Mad Men", and nobody is ever quite who they appear to be. Each one is filled with thwarted ambitions and frustrated dreams, none more so than Don Draper himself, whose closet, it's gradually revealed over Seasons 1 and 2, is filled with proverbial skeletons."


title: Mad Men

text: The show presents a workplace culture in which men frequently enter sexual relationships with women in which it is assumed that female employees are sexually available for their male bosses and in which jokes about the desirability of one's wife dying are told by husbands in front of their own wives. Most of the main characters have cheated on their wives. Marie Wilson, in an op-ed for "The Washington Post", said that:[I]t is difficult and painful to see the ways in which women and men dealt with each other and with power. It's painful because this behavior is not as far back in our past as we would like to think. Our daughters continually get the messages that power still comes through powerful men. And unfortunately being pretty is still a quality that can get you on the ladder—though it still won't take you to the top.According to the "Los Angeles Times":[T]he sexism, in particular, is almost suffocating, and not in the least fun to watch. But it's the force against which the most compelling female characters struggle, and the opposition that defines them. The interaction with everyday misogyny and condescension—the housewife whose shrink reports to her husband, the ad woman who's cut out of the after-hours wheeling and dealing—gives the characters purpose and shape.In "Salon", Nelle Engoron argued that while "Mad Men" seems to illuminate gender issues, its male characters get off "scot-free" for their drinking and adultery, while the female characters are often punished. Stephanie Coontz of "The Washington Post" said that women "portrayed the sexism of that era so unflinchingly, they told me, that they could not bear to watch." Some women interviewed mentioned that they had experienced the same "numbness of Betty Draper" and witnessed the "sense of male entitlement similar to Don's."


title: Mad Men

text: Aviva Dove-Viebahn wrote that ""Mad Men" straddles the line between a nuanced portrayal of how sexism and patriarchal entitlement shape lives, careers and social interactions in the 1960s and a glorified rendering of the 'fast-paced, chauvinistic world of 1960s advertising and all that comes with it.'" Melissa Witkowski, writing for "The Guardian", argued that Peggy's ascendancy was marred because the show "strongly implies that no woman had ever been a copywriter at Sterling Cooper prior to Peggy, but the circumstances of her promotion imply that this was merely because no woman had ever happened to have shown talent in front of a man before," pointing out that Peggy's career path bore little resemblance to the stories of successful ad women of the time such as Mary Wells Lawrence and Jean Wade Rindlaub. In 2013, the U.S. President Obama said "Peggy Olson gave him insight into how his strong-willed grandmother dealt with life in a man's world."


title: Mad Men

text: As the show's time progresses into the 1960s, the show portrays a world of liquor-stocked offices, boozy lunches and alcohol-soaked dinners. One incident in Season 2 finds advertising executive Freddy Rumsen being sent to rehab after urinating on himself. During the fourth season, Don Draper starts to realize he has a major drinking problem. In the sixties, bad behavior resulting from drinking was often considered macho and even romantic, rather than as result of addiction. One reviewer called the fourth season a "sobering tale of drunken excess" as the Don Draper character struggled with his addiction to alcohol.


title: Mad Men

text: Advertisement executive Jerry Della Femina said of the show:[I]f anything, it's underplayed. There was a tremendous amount of drinking. Three-martini lunches were the norm…while we were still looking at the menu, the third would arrive.… The only thing that saved us was that the clients and agencies that we were going back to drank as much as we did.… Bottles in desk drawers were not the exception but the rule.


title: Mad Men

text: The "Los Angeles Times" opined that "Mad Men" excels at "stories of characters fighting to achieve personal liberation in the restless years before the advent of the full-blown culture wars." One reviewer was excited that the fourth season, through Peggy, brought "the introduction to the Counterculture (Andy Warhol as the King of Pop and Leader of the Band), with all the loud music, joint-passing, underground movies so present in those times. Peggy's visit to a loft, with a "Life Magazine" photo editor-friend, placed her squarely in the center of the exciting creativity so rampant in the underground and also so rebellious against the mainstream." "The Huffington Post" focused on one scene where "Peggy joins her new beatnik friends in the lobby while Pete stays behind with the SCDP partners to relish…his newly captured $6 million account. As they embark on their opposite trajectories, the camera lingers on their knowing glances. Here is where we find emotional truth."


title: Mad Men

text: Critics contend that post-racial beliefs complicate the show by only visualizing people of color at work and rarely in their homes or from their point of view. Several writers have argued that the show distorts history by not showing black admen, noting real-life successful African American advertising executives who got their start in the 1960s such as Clarence Holte, Georg Olden, and Caroline Robinson Jones. Latoya Peterson, writing in "Slate" magazine's Double X, argued that "Mad Men" was glossing over racial issues.


title: Mad Men

text: "Slate" writer Tanner Colby praised the show's treatment of race and Madison Avenue as historically accurate, especially the storyline in the third season episode "The Fog" in which Pete Campbell's idea to market certain products specifically towards African-Americans is struck down by the company. "Slate" also referred to the fourth season episode, "The Beautiful Girls", in which Don shoots down Peggy Olson's suggestion of Harry Belafonte as a spokesman for Fillmore Auto, after Fillmore Auto faced a boycott for not hiring black employees. Colby also pointed to an exposé published in a 1963 issue of "Ad Age" that revealed that "out of over 20,000 employees, the report identified only 25 blacks working in any kind of professional or creative capacity, i.e., nonclerical or custodial." Colby wrote, ""Mad Men" isn't cowardly for avoiding race. Quite the opposite. It's brave for being honest about Madison Avenue's cowardice."


title: Mad Men

text: Cigarette smoking, more common in the United States of the 1960s than it is now, is featured throughout the series; many characters can be seen smoking several times over the course of an episode. In the pilot, representatives of Lucky Strike cigarettes come to Sterling Cooper looking for a new advertising campaign in the wake of a "Reader's Digest" report that smoking will lead to illnesses, including lung cancer. Talk of smoking being harmful to health and physical appearance is usually dismissed or ignored. In the fourth season, after Lucky Strike fires Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce as its ad agency, Draper writes an advertisement in "The New York Times" titled "Why I'm Quitting Tobacco", which announces SCDP's refusal to take tobacco accounts. The finale finds the agency in talks with the American Cancer Society. In the series's penultimate episode, Betty Draper is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, after having been depicted as a heavy smoker throughout the series. The actors smoke herbal cigarettes, not tobacco cigarettes; Matthew Weiner said in an interview with "The New York Times" that the reason is that "you don't want actors smoking real cigarettes. They get agitated and nervous. I've been on sets where people throw up, they've smoked so much."


title: Mad Men

text: "Mad Men" received widespread critical acclaim throughout its run, and is generally included on critics' lists of the greatest television shows of all time. The American Film Institute selected it as one of the top ten television programs of 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012 (having aired no episodes during 2011) and it was named the best television show of 2007 by the Television Critics Association and several national publications, including the "Chicago Tribune", "The New York Times", the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette", "TIME Magazine", and "TV Guide."


title: Mad Men

text: On the review aggregator website Metacritic, the first season scored 77/100; the second season scored 88/100; the third season scored 87/100; the fourth season scored 92/100; the fifth season scored 89/100; the sixth season scored 88/100; the seventh season, part one scored 85/100; and the seventh season, part two scored 83/100. It was ranked 21st in "TV Guide" 2013 list of the 60 best TV series ever, and the Writers Guild of America named it seventh in a list of the 101 best-written shows in the history of television. Rob Sheffield of "Rolling Stone" called "Mad Men" "the greatest TV drama of all time." In 2022, "Rolling Stone" ranked "Mad Men" as the seventh-greatest TV show of all time.


title: Mad Men

text: A "New York Times" reviewer called the series groundbreaking for "luxuriating in the not-so-distant past."


title: Mad Men

text: Regarding Season 3, Matthew Gilbert of "The Boston Globe" wrote "it's an absolutely gorgeous, amber-tinted vision of the early 1960s" and added "detailed with enough 1950s-era accoutrements to seem authentically Camelot."


title: Mad Men

text: The "San Francisco Chronicle" called "Mad Men" "stylized, visually arresting…an adult drama of introspection and the inconvenience of modernity in a man's world."


title: Mad Men

text: A "Chicago Sun-Times" reviewer described the series as an "unsentimental portrayal of complicated 'whole people' who act with the more decent 1960 manners America has lost, while also playing grab-ass and crassly defaming subordinates."


title: Mad Men

text: The reaction at "Entertainment Weekly" was similar, noting how in the period in which "Mad Men" takes place, "play is part of work, sexual banter isn't yet harassment, and America is free of self-doubt, guilt, and countercultural confusion."


title: Mad Men

text: The "Los Angeles Times" said that the show had found "a strange and lovely space between nostalgia and political correctness."


title: Mad Men

text: The show also received critical praise for its historical accuracy – mainly its depictions of gender and racial bias, sexual dynamics in the workplace, and the high prevalence of smoking and drinking.


title: Mad Men

text: "The Washington Post" agreed with most other reviews in regard to "Mad Men" visual style, but disliked what was referred to as "lethargic" pacing of the storylines. A review of the first season DVD set in the "London Review of Books" by Mark Greif was much less laudatory. Greif stated that the series was an "unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better" as the cast was a series of historical stereotypes that failed to do anything except "congratulate the present." In a February 2011 review of the show's first four seasons, critic Daniel Mendelsohn wrote a critical review that called "Mad Men" a "drama with aspirations to treating social and historical 'issues'—the show is melodramatic rather than dramatic."


title: Mad Men

text: In 2019, "The Guardian", which ranked the show 3rd on its list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century, stated that by spanning the entire 60s, "Mad Men" showed "the mammoth social shifts in an ad agency in minute detail, and became…a meditation on how modern America came to be made, one iconic advert at a time."


title: Mad Men

text: Viewership for the premiere at 10:00 pm on July 19, 2007, was higher than any other AMC original series at that time, and attained a 1.4 household rating, with 1.2 million households and 1.65 million total viewers. The numbers for the first season premiere were more than doubled for the heavily promoted second season premiere, which received 2.06 million viewers. A major drop in viewership for the episode following the second season premiere prompted concern from some television critics. However, 1.75 million people viewed the second season finale, which was up 20% over the season 2 average, and significantly more than the 926,000 people who viewed the first season finale. The cumulative audience for the episode was 2.9 million viewers, when the two re-broadcasts at 11:00 pm and 1:00 am were factored in.


title: Mad Men

text: The third season premiere, which aired August 16, 2009, garnered 2.8 million views on its first run, and 0.78 million with the 11:00 pm and 1:00 am repeats. In 2009, "Mad Men" was second in Nielsen's list of Top 10 timeshifted primetime TV programs, with a 57.7% gain in viewers, second only to the final season of "Battlestar Galactica".


title: Mad Men

text: The fourth season premiere received 2.9 million viewers, and was up five percent from the ratings for the debut of season 3 and up 61 percent from the third season average, and became the most watched-episode in AMC history until its fifth season premiere, and later, the series premieres of "The Walking Dead" and "Better Call Saul".


title: Mad Men

text: The fifth season premiere, "A Little Kiss", was the most watched episode of "Mad Men" of all time to date, receiving 3.54 million viewers and 1.6 million viewers in the 18–49 demographic. Before the fifth season, "Mad Men" had never achieved above a 1.0 in the 18–49 demographic. Charlie Collier, AMC's president, said that:


title: Mad Men

text: The fifth season finale, "The Phantom", was watched by 2.7 million viewers, which was the highest ratings for a "Mad Men" finale until the series finale aired on May 17, 2015. In 2012, the series was second in Nielsen's list of Top 10 timeshifted primetime TV programs, with a 127% gain in viewers.


title: Mad Men

text: On April 7, 2013, the sixth season premiered to 3.37 million viewers, and a 1.1 adults 18–49. This was down from the fifth season premiere, but up from the fifth season finale. The sixth season finale on June 23, 2013, attracted 2.69 million total viewers, and achieved a 0.9 adults 18–49 demographic rating; on par with the fifth season finale. This helped bring the season average up to 2.49 million viewers, down just slightly from the season five average.


title: Mad Men

text: The first part of the seventh season, titled "The Beginning", premiered on April 13, 2014, and garnered 2.27 million total viewers and a 0.8 adults 18–49 rating. This was down 48 percent in viewers and 38 percent in adults 18–49 from the sixth season premiere, and down from the sixth season finale. The first part of season seven concluded on May 25, 2014, to 1.94 million viewers and a 0.7 adults 18–49 rating, down in both from the season 6 finale. This brought the average for the first part of the season down to 2.01 million viewers. The second part of season seven, titled "The End of an Era", premiered on April 5, 2015, to 2.27 million viewers and a 0.8 adults 18–49 rating; identical to the season 7 premiere. The series finale of "Mad Men" aired on May 17, 2015, to 3.29 million viewers and a 1.1 adults 18–49 rating. 1.7 million of these viewers were aged 25–54, and 1.4 million were ages 18–49, making it the highest viewed and highest rated episode since the sixth season premiere. This episode brought up the part two average to 2.12 million viewers, and brought up the overall season seven average to 2.06 million viewers.


title: Mad Men

text: With "Mad Men", Weiner and his creative team have "received critical acclaim for its historical authenticity and visual style" although opinions on "Mad Men" vary among people who worked in advertising during the 1960s. According to Robert Levinson, a consultant for "Mad Men" who worked at BBDO from 1960 to 1980, "what [Matthew Weiner] captured was so real. The drinking was commonplace, the smoking was constant, the relationships between the executives and the secretaries was exactly right". Jerry Della Femina, who worked as a copywriter in that era and later founded his own agency, said that the show is accurate in its depiction of "the smoking, the prejudice and the bigotry".


title: Mad Men

text: Allen Rosenshine, a copywriter who went on to lead BBDO, called the show a "total fabrication", saying that "if anybody talked to women the way these goons do, they'd have been out on their ass". George Lois, who worked at Doyle Dane Bernbach for a year, before starting his own ad agency in 1960, said:"Mad Men" is nothing more than the fulfilment of every possible stereotype of the early 1960s bundled up nicely to convince consumers that the sort of morally repugnant behavior exhibited by its characters…is glamorous and vintage.… [U]nlike the TV 'Mad Men,' we worked full, exhausting, joyous days: pitching new business, creating ideas, "comping" them up, storyboarding them, selling them, photographing them, and directing commercials. And our only 'extracurricular activity' was chasing fly balls and dunking basketballs on our agency softball and basketball teams! Andrew Cracknell, author of "The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising", also thought the show lacked authenticity, stating, "One thing of which they all are all equally contemptuous", in regards to the industry's elite, "is the output of Sterling Cooper. But then they have every right. None of them would ever have wanted to work for Draper and none of his departments would have got a job at any of their agencies. Particularly Draper himself. Too phony."


title: Mad Men

text: According to an analysis of the language used in "Mad Men" by Benjamin Schmidt, a visiting graduate fellow at the Cultural Observatory at Harvard University, the vocabulary and phrases used in the show are not all quite authentic to the period, despite attempts to use contemporary vocabulary. Using a computer program, he determined that the show uses relatively few words that are clearly anachronistic but that there are many words and phrases used that are far more common in modern speech, than in the speech of the era ("need to", "feel good about", "euthanize", etc). In aggregate these words and constructions give a misleading impression of the speech patterns of the time. He notes that the use of modern business language (leverage, signing bonus, etc.) unknown or little used at the time "creeps in with striking regularity."