In one of my books that I'm reading for my Modern Turkey class, the final section of each chapter is a narrative, which actually doesn't fit into the point of the chapter.  At the end of the fourth chapter though, the narrative that is told, is the story of Troy and the role of Achilles.  But, to start out the story, the narrative describes his mother, Thetis, sitting on the shores of the Euphrates River in southern Turkey.

There is no background to who Thetis is, beyond stating that she is Achilles' mother, and a sea nymph, in this narrative.   When I started reading this section of Crescent and Star, I thought about what her story must be.  So, I've spent the last couple of hours trying to connect a mythic character to a physical place that I've spent the entire semester learning about.  It's really hard for me to place that connection because I am so used to facts and dates, that prove something happened.
At the same time, though, I think that the story of Troy is mostly true (even though most people think that it is highly exaggerated to make it seem like a bigger deal) including the role of Achilles, so that kind of has to mean that Thetis was also real, even if her origins are exaggerated and turned into myth.

Her story, in Metamorphoses, is pretty much like the other stories, the gods were fearful of her, because she  was going to give birth to Achilles, so they sent Peleus to marry her in an attempt to prevent this.  And then he raped her and had her tied down to prevent her from escaping.  But, in the end, she married Peleus and gave birth to Achilles.  So, by trying to stop Achilles' birth, Jove pretty much caused it.  And led to the battle of Troy.  That, in turn, led to the author of Crescent and Star to record this story in a random section of the book  I don't know what the significance of this could possibly be, but I really like that one of my history books actually tells a story from mythology.