Supplication

Supplication is a theme of earliest antiquity, embodied in the Iliad as the prayers of Chryses for the return of his daughter, and of Priam for the dead body of his son, Hector.

Richard Martin notes repeated references to supplicants throughout the poem, including warriors begging to be spared by the Greeks on the battlefield.

During the Republican era, this approach was not made at an altar and was not considered a prayer (prex) in the technical religious sense.

The pledge to fulfill the request is the part of the process considered sacred and witnessed by deities including Fides and Jupiter.

[3] In Latin, the word submissio more commonly expresses this act than supplicatio, which was a form of public prayer procession.

One example of supplication is the Western Christian ritual of novena (from novem, the Latin word for "nine") wherein one repeatedly asks for the same favor over a period of nine days.

There are a number of supplications mentioned in Islam in the Quran and Sunnah that can be recited for various purposes for the blessings and the rewards of God.