In a paper just published in the scholarly journal Historia,  "Greek Epiphanies and the Sensed Presence", Gabriel Herman, Professor of Ancient History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. and award-winning author of Morality and Behaviour in Democratic Athens: A Social History, argues the third man factor "offers an important clue for unravelling the mental processes that gave rise to the epiphanies in ancient Greek culture."

"Most scholars trained in the rigors of classical philology would raise an eyebrow at the suggestion that there is a common factor to the events of 9/11, as they occurred in Mahattan in 2001, and the battle of Marathon, fought on the north-eastern corner of the Attic peninsula in 490 B.C.," writes Prof. Herman. "The feature shared by these events is the sensation of some of the participants of having been guided by an unseen presence. This perceived presence has often been dubbed 'the third man factor'."

Prof. Herman adds: "circumstances similar to those described by Geiger with regard to modern visions of the sensed presence also prevailed in connection with the Greek epiphanies. Both sets of vision were preceded by a life-threatening trauma and/or a state of severe existential distress."