Ha! Yeah, yeah, Augustine, well, he just didn't know what he was saying, poor dimwitted pagan holdover. Thank goodness Luther and Calvin corrected him on that score. Oh no, wait a second, no they didn't: they had unnaturally high regard for her too. Hm....they must be dimwitted too!
Let me paint you a different picture. And that is that devotion to the Blessed Virgin was *there from the very beginning* as is attested in Augustine and the Greek and Syriac Fathers the martyrs and the murals in the catacombs and everywhere else. It's the modern squeamishness about it that needs explaining.
Excuse me, but Augustine is a great example of how someone grows in grace. Starting from a pagan culture, towards the end of his life he understood the nature of God so well that he provided the groundwork for the Reformation. Today, many Catholics seem to have this reverse. They start out as Christians but end up with all this mumbo-gumbo hoo-ha; going from Christianity to paganism.
As far as paintings on the cave walls go, you can find lots of those in all sorts of pagan cults. Am I suppose to be impressed that a bunch of Greeks Christians misguidedly decided to make Mary the new Aphrodite? They should have spent more time reading the scriptures rather than paint pictures.