Quote Originally Posted by soibean
Why didnt the Romans take over more of the land surrounding the sea above turkey? (sorry for the vague description)
Do you mean around the Black Sea? They had trouble enough with defeating the Dacians and pushing their borders forth in the Balkans area. To the north of the Black Sea was the steppes where nomads like the Scythians and Sarmatians were. The Romans didn't really have the means to conquer such areas, nor was there much motivation for them to do so. They wanted to have easily defendable borders (along the river Danube that is), not steppeland where the mobile nomads could attack and raid them easily.