The Age of Pericles. The interval of about fifty years between the close of the Persian and the beginning of the Peloponnesian war has been called the Age of Pericles, -a somewhat misleading term, as Pericles was at the head of Athenian affairs for only twenty years (449-429 B.C.). But he was the most brilliant statesman that Athens produced during that period, and his work is so closely indentified with the greatness of the city that it is not strange that his name has been given to the period.-Colby, 1899