I think of Perl as a Python-PHP hybrid. A pragmatic product of its time that will endure, and while I'm grateful for never needing it, I'm glad that it's a solid option still for those who do.
Python's origin was as a teaching language (originally ABC I think?), and thus the simplicity of the syntax. It was kinda cool that Python was around for so long before it took off... I had the O'Reilly Python book way back in the 90s.
Perl's influences were awk, sed, bash, C, Fortran, and Lisp.
It was the best job ever. The systems monitoring tool used ancient Perl4 (this was circa 2001 when Perl4 was like a decade old) and Prolog to handle event management.