I can't tell you how I escaped, but if you ever hear an urban legend about a vampire stewardess and a plane full of corpses, they're exaggerating... a little.

I'm currently enjoying Livy's Early History of Rome (Penguin Classics, technically books I-V of Ab urbe condita libri), translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. I especially appreciate the introduction which says in so many words that virtually everything Livy recounts is a fable, and outlines what's actually known about early Rome (or was known as of 1971) through archeology and the few reliable records. Apparently the stories in Livy are not only excessively melodramatic, but often echo or even copy Greek tales that were presumably borrowed:

The twins, Romulus and Remus, sons of a god, exposed by the river, suckled by a wolf and discovered by a shepherd, are an adaptation of an old Near Eastern myth, found in Greece in the legend of Neleus and Pelias, sons of the god Poseidon exposed on the river Enipeus and suckled by a bitch and a mare. The fatal quarrel between the twins culminating in Remus derisively vaulting Romulus's walls recalls similar Greek legends of Oeneus and Toxeus or Poimander and Leucippus. ...Two of the most notorious events of Tarquinius Superbus's reign are openly imitated from the Greek historian Herodotus - the lopping of the poppy-heads was Thrasyboulus's message to Periiander and the infiltration of Gabii by Sextus Tarquinius was suggested by Zopyrus's ruse against Babylon. Sometimes events which were chronologically close in Greek and Roman history have been assimilated. The tyrants at Athens were expelled as a result of a love-affair in 510 B.C.; it is no accident that the Tarquins are similarly expelled about 510 B.C. as a result of a love-affair also.

Livy seems to have been at least somewhat aware of this problem - he writes that some of the events before Rome's founding have "more of the charm of poetry than a sound historical record" - and this makes it all the more rich when he then explains how we should observe a trend of steady moral decline based on these fables:

I invite the reader's attention to the much more serious consideration of the kind of lives our ancestors lived... I would then have him trace the progress of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.

Perhaps it's too much to expect consistency between high-flown introduction and internal details, but it's worth contrasting this with his later explanation of the motives with which Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, created most of Rome's state church out of whole cloth, in the interests of social stability:

Rome had originally been founded by force of arms; the new king now prepared to give the community a second beginning, this time on the solid basis of law and religious observance... [T]here was no immediate prospect of attack from outside and the tight rein of constant military discipline was relaxed. In these novel circumstances there was an obvious danger of a general relaxation of the nation's moral fibre, so to prevent its occurrence Numa decided upon a step which he felt would prove more effective than anything else with a mob so rough and ignorant as the Romans were in those days. This was to inspire them with the fear of the gods.

... 

By these means the whole population of Rome was given a great many new things to think about and attend to, with the result that everybody was diverted from military preoccupations. They now had serious matters to consider; and believing, as they now did, that the heavenly powers took part in human affairs, they became so much absorbed in the cultivation of religion and so deeply imbued with the sense of their religious duties, that the sanctity of an oath had more power to control their lives than the fear of punishment for law-breaking.

Not that this necessarily makes Livy inconsistent in philosophy. The overall idea is that the natural tendency of humanity is to decline, especially with urbanity, and the only reason things didn't go to hell ages ago is the occasional mighty effort like the founding of a nation that turns back the tide, after which things set to declining again.  This idea didn't lose dominance until the 19th century, as I understand. Livy's statements seem odd, I'd bet, only in contrast to the moralist and religious essentialism that modern-day writers always implicitly set themselves against.

Moving on, another striking note is how closely the rise of Rome seems interwoven with woman-bashing, specifically the blaming of the female victims of rape and murder (emphasis added):

[On the birth of Romulus and Remus:] The Vestal Virgin was raped and gave birth to twin boys. Mars, she declared, was their father - perhaps she believed it, perhaps she was merely hoping by the pretence to palliate her guilt.

[In the war started by the rape of the Sabine women:] This was the moment when the Sabine women, the original cause of the quarrel, played their decisive part. ..."We are mothers now," they cried; "our children are your sons - your grandsons: do not put on them the stain of parricide. If our marriage - if the relationship between you - is hateful to you, turn your anger against us. We are the cause of strife; on our account our husbands and fathers lie wounded or dead; and we would rather die ourselves than live on either widowed or orphaned.

[After Horatius kills his sister for the impertinence of grieving because he killed her fiancé, and is put on trial for murder:] In the course of the hearing the decisive factor was the statement of Horatius's father, to the effect that his daughter deserved her death.

These three examples occur within the space of 25 pages.