伯里克利时代是指古希腊的一个历史时期，其始于波希战争，终于伯里克利离世或伯罗奔尼撒战争结束，大约由前480年至前404年。在同一时期大批在政治，哲学，建筑，雕塑，历史以及文学上卓有成就的希腊人中，作为希腊将军、政治家和演说家，伯里克利仍然引人注目。他支持文学艺术，给雅典带来之后再也未曾有过的辉煌，他还主持大量公共项目以改善公民生活。所有这些使得雅典进入黄金时代，亦为古希腊的全盛时期，故被称为伯里克利时代。

在这一世纪的时间里，雅典由十位每年由十个部落的公民选举出来的στρατηγοι（即将军）统治。这些στρατηγοι履行包括军队出征规划、其他城邦使者的接待和政治事务指导在内的各项责任。在民主派领导人厄菲阿尔特的统治时期，伯里克利还是厄菲阿尔特的副手。当厄菲阿尔忒斯在前461年被暗杀后，伯利克里临危受命，并在前445年被选为στρατηγοι，从此一直在雅典集会上被推选连任这职位，直到他在前429年去世。

Fifth-century Athens is the Greek city-state of Athens in the time from 480 BC-404 BC. This was a period of Athenian political hegemony, economic growth and cultural flourishing formerly known as the Golden Age of Athens with the later part The Age of Pericles. The period began in 478 BC after defeat of the Persian invasion, when an Athenian-led coalition of city-states, known as the Delian League, confronted the Persians to keep the liberated Asian Greek cities free. After peace was made with Persia in the mid 5th century BCE, what started as an alliance of independent city-states became an Athenian empire when Athens abandoned the pretense of parity among its allies and relocated the Delian League treasury from Delos to Athens, where it funded the building of the Athenian Acropolis and put half its population on the public payroll and maintained dominating naval power in the Greek world. With the empire's funds, military dominance and its political fortunes guided by statesman and orator Pericles, Athens produced some of the most influential and enduring cultural artifacts of the Western tradition. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides all lived and worked in 5th century BCE Athens, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates, and the philosopher Socrates. Athens' patron goddess was Athena, from whom they derived the name.