And this was sometimes done with the official sanction of the gods themselves, as expressed through the oracle of Delphi.
The sanctity of the old image was sometimes transferred to the new one; a striking example of this is seen in the case of Artemis Brauronia on the Athenian Acropolis.

It had been the custom for the garments presented to the goddess by her worshippers to be placed upon her primitive statue; and when a new and worthier representation of the goddess was placed in the temple in the fourth century, we are informed by inscriptions that dedicated garments were sometimes hung upon it, even though it was a statue from the hand of Praxiteles.

It sometimes happened that the old and the new statues stood side by side in the same temple, or in adjacent temples, and they seem then to exemplify the two kinds of idolatry--the literal and the imaginative--the one being the actual subject of the rites ceremonially observed, and the other being the visible presentment of the deity, and helping the worshipper to concentrate his prayers and aspirations.

Here the art of the sculptor had the fullest scope, and it is in such cases that he could, as Quintilian said of Phidias, "make some addition to the received religion." This duality was, however, the result of accident rather than the normal arrangement, and, so long as the primitive image remained the official object of worship, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the new and more artistic statue to have its full religious effect.

In many cases, probably in most cases, it was actually substituted, sooner or later, for the earlier embodiment of the deity.