[1] During days of public prayer, Roman men, women, and children traveled in procession to religious sites around the city praying for divine aid.
Supplications might also be ordered in response to prodigies (prodigia); participants wore wreaths, carried laurel twigs, and attended sacrifices at temple precincts throughout the city.
[2] Supplicatio as a form of religious expression is distinct in meaning from the general English definition of supplication as an act of beseeching following a military defeat or surrender, for which the Latin word submissio was more commonly used.
This honour was conferred upon Cicero on account of his suppression of the conspiracy of Catiline, which had never been decreed to any one before in a civil capacity (togatus) as he frequently takes occasion to mention.
A supplicatio, a solemn supplication and humiliation, was also decreed in times of public danger and distress and on account of prodigies to avert the anger of the gods.