The adoption of Octavian has in the past been considered controversial, but today there is something approaching consensus. Recent studies have suggested that the abnormal political circumstances can explain how an individual who was adopted under Caesar's will nevertheless underwent adrogatio (Schmitthenner [1973]; Kunst [1996] 93–104; Gardner [1998] 128–9). Dispute has previously been based on whether it was possible to encompass an adrogatio posthumously. Normally an adrogatio required the presence of the parties, and Octavian's case requires an explanation of how this condition was avoided or subverted.

Some Romanists have assimilated primitive wills to adrogation. This approach has behind it assumptions about the need for testators somehow to cater for continuity of the family in the absence of heirs of their own blood. By the time of the late Republic and early Empire, a will bequeathing an estate to someone who was not an automatic heir on intestacy (a suus heres) need not contain any obligation to continue the family or to take on the name. Nevertheless, use of the so-called testamentary adoption can be seen as an attempt to create obligations of this type, and this has been used to justify the interpretation that Caesar's will authorised an adrogation. The poor attestation of testamentary adoptions creates problems, because Octavian's undergoing testamentary adoption by Julius Caesar is our only detailed case.