Hellenization of the Slavs

So what if the Byzantines invaded the Balkans earlier, conquering everything they did under Basil II. It could either be earlier (mid 900s) or the same time as Basil did (circa 1019)...

If the Byzantines manage to hold onto these areas for several centuries (say at least until the 1200s. Would they have been able to (through resettlements, linguistic stuff, etc, have been able to hellenize many or most of the Slavs in the conquered region? They did it with Greece after the Slavs invaded, so why not other areas.

Would that be possible at all? And if it is, how could it be accomplished?
 
I think it is definitely possible, if you start early enough. If the Byzantines deport the Slavic-speaking aristocracy to Anatolia (which was a tendency of theirs) and replace them with Greeks, and make Greek the liturgical language, that would impede Slavic culture. If this process continued for centuries, perhaps the Slavs would begin to see themselves as Hellenes, and as part of Greece.

It would be interesting for the future of TTL, with a "Greece" that extends from Croatia to Anatolia.
 
well this is what bizant basically tried to do in OTL olnly with less emfasis on "hellenisation" but they just lost too many battles and then croatia and dalmatia were already chatolic so they were too late, and the bulgarians and serbs were too strong to conquer without too much effort, as it realy wasnt worth that much, and they already had diplomatic and political dominance ower most of the balkans

they did hold dalmatia for a while do
 
well this is what bizant basically tried to do in OTL olnly with less emfasis on "hellenisation" but they just lost too many battles and then croatia and dalmatia were already chatolic so they were too late, and the bulgarians and serbs were too strong to conquer without too much effort, as it realy wasnt worth that much, and they already had diplomatic and political dominance ower most of the balkans

they did hold dalmatia for a while do

If the Croats had been Orthodox, and the Byzantines had been more militarily successful, but it have worked better?
 
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