For those of us in the local Harris Teeter, waiting to pay for our Cilantro Ancho Double Chocolate Milanos, a romance novel might be nothing more than a paperback with a painting of a bare-chested male model towering over a swooning raven-haired beauty.

These are the "bodice-rippers," weighty tomes that don't have the best reputation for, shall we say, literary merit.

"Romance will always have its detractors," says Caren Crane, an aspiring romance author and mother who lives, works and writes in Raleigh. "Those who feel romance isn't intellectual enough probably haven't read a romance lately. To me, there's something for everybody."

Something for everybody is right. That stereotypical supermarket paperback is a sample of more than a dozen categories and subcategories that have evolved and expanded with the popularity of the romance genre. In 2006, according to statistics cited by the trade organization Romance Writers of America, 26 percent of all books sold were romances, with $1.3 billion in revenue.

What accounts for the sales? A tried-and true plot, for one. A romance novel follows a predictable pattern: girl meets boy; girl loses boy; girl gets boy in the end -- emphasis on the "girl" and the "gets." Romance novels stand or fall on the strength of their heroines, and their happy endings.

Crane explains: "I really enjoy stories about people finding love and building a life together."

And there's another reason: longevity. In one incarnation or another, the romance novel has been popular for about 2,000 years.

The first century AD saw long prose works called Greek romances sell big. Previously, Greek mythology with its traditional characters had reigned supreme as popular entertainment, much like our movies today.

But the Greek romance starred the goddess and the hero, instead of the gal and the guy. The best known of these works is "Chaireas and Callirhoe" -- something like "Romeo and Juliet" meets "Pirates of the Caribbean" meets "The Princess Bride."

Chaireas and Callirhoe are teenagers from prominent families in Sicily. Their fathers don't like each other, but they finally allow the kids to marry. Then some of Callirhoe's disgruntled suitors persuade Chaireas that Callirhoe has been unfaithful, and he kicks her in the stomach, inducing a deathlike coma.

Callirhoe is buried, then saved by a gravedigger, then sold into slavery, from which position she inspires the passion of more than one Asian monarch. Chaireas pursues Callirhoe after discovering she is alive. Captured in Asia, he escapes and after many military exploits becomes a commander in the Egyptian navy. On one of his campaigns, Callirhoe is among the civilians he captures. The lovers recognize each other and live happily ever after.

This extraordinary document -- about as popular in the ancient world as romance novels are today, and as little respected -- survived by accident, in Egyptian desert garbage dumps. Schoolteachers, the literary gatekeepers of the medieval world, had little stake in the ancient supermarket papyrus-back; they were too busy conjugating amo, amas, amat.

But the romance story survived in the hearts of the people, and thrived. In fact, the English word "romance" derives from the French word "roman," which means a story told in the "Romance" languages of French, Spanish or Italian -- the vernacular, rather than academic and churchy Latin.

Popular bards known as troubadours -- both men and women -- brought the love story to medieval courts and spawned stories of "courtly" (romantic) love all over Europe. Lancelot and Guinevere, of the King Arthur saga, are the best known of medieval couples, but there are countless others on which such writers as Shakespeare drew.

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