Abstract
abstract: Dido's gifts to the shipwrecked Trojans in book 1 of the Aeneid resemble suitors' gifts (ἕδνα) recorded in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women . Reading Dido against a Hesiodic rather than Homeric model casts her as a suitor of Aeneas, which in turn lends further coloring to the composition of Aeneas's reciprocating gifts of a palla ("dress"), uelamen ("veil"), corona ("crown"), and jewelry, gifts associated in Greek tragedy with the bridal trousseau (φερναί). The (imperfect) recasting of Dido and Aeneas as suitor and bride, respectively, only becomes legible when better attention is paid to the gendered dynamics of exchange and modes of female communication within the Aeneid .