Phrase Usage – Correct Usage of ‘Which, in Turn’

grammarphrase-usagephrasessentence-structure

His empire created the foundation for the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, which in turn, had their own great works.

Best Answer

Although your sentence is syntactically sound, it's not entirely semantically sound. You can use which, in turn here, but the existing construction is missing a parallel component.

It would sound better with an additional piece and some slight reprhasing:

His empire created the foundation for the Roman Republic, which had some great works, and later the Roman Empire, which, in turn, had its own great works.

Otherwise, a different parallel meaning would make effective use of the phrase:

His empire created the foundation for the Roman Republic, which, in turn, created the foundation for the Roman Empire.

Alternatively, if I'm parsing your meaning incorrectly—and you mean the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire to be a single thing, rather than one thing that led to the other, then you could use the following:

His empire, which had some great works, created the foundation for the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, which, in turn, had its own great works.

But again, this involves a parallel structure—here, one thing having great works followed by another thing having great works—that is missing from the original sentence.

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