"is the veneration of icons any more idolotrous than the worship of saints portrayed by images of stone,wood or precious metals? "

That is a very perplexing question, why they rejected statues* but kept the veneration of Relics and Gilded Icons.

*At the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul in July I was amazed to see pre-iconoclast statues, one of St. John the Fore-runner (Baptist). They continued to make secular statues though like Pagan mythological creatures such as the Griffon.
It seems that in Romaio life the Church had the last word, not the State.