Sometimes the early image, which was often of wood, may have decayed or been worn away by the attentions lavished upon it; we hear of a statue of which the hand had perished under the kisses of the devout.

We hear also of cases in which it had been entirely lost--for instance, the Black Demete of Phigalia, an uncouth image with a horse's head; here, when a plague had warned the people to replace it, the AEginetan sculptor Onatas undertook the task; and he is said to have been vouchsafed a vision in sleep which enabled him to reproduce exactly this unsightly idol.

It would not seem that such a commission gave much scope to his artistic powers; but it is noteworthy that the Phigalians employed one of the most famous sculptors of the day.

Elsewhere the conditions were more favourable, and it was possible for the artist, while conforming to the accepted type, to give it a more correct form and more pleasing features.
Daedalus, we are told--and in this story Daedalus is an impersonation of the art of the early sculptors in Greece--made statues of the gods so life-like that they had to be chained to their pedestals for fear they should run away.

It is likely that this tale goes back to a genuine tradition; for Pausanias actually saw statues with fetters attached to them in several early shrines in Greece.