Were There Aliens in the Roman Empire?

Controversy has broken out between the academic world and a bunch of conspiracy theorists over whether extra-terrestrial creatures were a common occurence in the Roman Empire, and whether they could have left alien DNA in the gene pool of western Europe.

A noted expert in the so-called "lady in red", Chris de Burgh, said:

A spaceman came travelling on his ship from afar,
'Twas light years of time since his mission did start,
And over a village he halted his craft,
And it hung in the sky like a star, just like a star...

Many alt-righ commentators have doubted the evidence of galactic diversity. One tweeted,

"If there were aliens in 1st Century Palestine how come they haven't appeared in BBC cartoons?"

While another suggested,

"Aliens in a space ship? You'll be suggesting the baby in a manger was God next."

In response, serious historians have suggested that in fact the whole thing was just a crappy 1970s song, played on CDs by department stores that don't have the theological or historical skills to point out the whole conceit is a pile of Roman era pants. Also that - if the best prophecy the aliens could come up with was that 2,000 years later a public schoolboy would rip off their chorus - then frankly they were hardly fit to be mistaken for the star of Bethlehem in the first place. The chances  of aliens having made it to Hadrian's Wall and fought off the Picts with a Martian Death Ray were described as "minimal."

The BBC, in an attempt to ensure balance, had a heated debate between someone who spends his nights on Solsbury Hill in the hope of seeing Peter Gabriel descend from the heavens, someone who believes that the world is flat, and the secretary of the Chris de Burgh fan club. The resultant debate was described in the Independent as:

"You won't believe how Gullible Greg from the Bath UFOlogists burned Brenda the de Burgh fan."

The argument continues. More heat than light is expected.