autarkia ancient Greek term meaning ‘self-sufficiency’. Autarkia was widely regarded as a mark of the human good, happiness (eudaimonia). A life is self-sufficient when it is worthy of choice and lacks nothing. What makes a life self-sufficient – and thereby happy – was a matter of controversy. Stoics maintained that the mere possession of virtue would suffice; Aristotle and the Peripatetics insisted that virtue must be exercised and even, perhaps, accompanied by material goods. There was also a debate among later Greek thinkers over whether a self-sufficient life is solitary or whether only life in a community can be self-sufficient. See also ARISTOTLE , STO- ICIS. E.C.H.