The device is natural enough.
Daedalus was a magician as well as a sculptor; and if he could give his statues eyes that they might see, and ears that they might hear, it was an obvious inference that if he gave them legs they might run away and desert their shrines and their worshippers.
We may very likely find also in a similar notion the explanation of a peculiarity often found in early statues of the gods--the well-known archaic smile.

Many explanations, technical and otherwise, have been given of this device; but none of them can get over the fact that it was just as easy, or even easier, for a primitive sculptor to make the mouth straight as to make it curve up at the ends, and that he often did make it straight.

When he does not do so, it is probably done with intention; and it is quite in accordance with the conditions of early religious art that he should make the image of a deity smile in order that the deity himself might smile upon his worshippers; and a pleasant expression might also, by a natural transfer of ideas, be supposed to be pleasing to the god, and so attract him to his statue.

We are told that at Chios there was a head of Artemis set high up, which appeared morose to those entering the temple, but when they left it seemed to have become cheerful.

This may have been originally due to some accident of placing or lighting, but it seems to have acquired a religious significance; and we can hardly deny a similar significance to the smile which we find on so many early statues.