That's idolatry. Surely you didn't think the pagan idols were the gods themselves did you? They also represented the gods they serve. God told us in Deuteronomy 12 not to do what the heathen do. Yet the Catholic Church readily admits that they incorporate pagan worship practices.
No, its idolatry to an iconoclastic with puritan stripes, particularly the American Fundamentalist Protestant stripe. If was not to Saint Polycarp, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, no orthodox Church Father nor was it to the 2nd Council of Nicea in 787, which predated Calvin and Zwingli by almost 800 years.
Of course I don’t think pagan idols were God. That is the context of making a graven image and bowing down to it as if it were God. The Invisible reality that I am referring to is God, the realities, if would thus be CHrist, the Holy Spirit, etc. So an Icon with a Dove is a visible symbol of an invisible reality, that reality being the Holy Spirit. One worships the Holy Spirit, one venerates the Icon that symbolizes the Holy Spirit.