How does Marguerite Yourcenar use imagery in Memoirs of Hadrian?

Imagery:

"I was not so sanguine as to think that it would always lie within our power to avoid all wars, but I wished them to be no more than defensive. I dreamed of an army trained to maintain order on frontiers less extended, in necessary, but secure."

"Our Rome is no longer the village of the days of Evander, big with a future that has already partly passed by; the plundering Rome of the time of the Republic has performed its role; the mad capital of the first Caesars inclines now to greater sobriety; other Romes will come, whose forms I see but dimly, but whom I shall have helped to mold."

"[Antinous] has the infinite capacity of a young dog of play and for swift repose, and the same fierceness and trust. This graceful hound, avid both for caresses and commands, took his post at my feet ... If I have said nothing yet of a beauty do apparent it is not merely because of the reticence of a man too completely conquered."