Plato, Apology

As we read Plato's Apology, we see Socrates under trail for corrupting the youth and blaspheming the gods.  Upon his conviction, he makes a ridiculous request that makes some, people who didn't even vote him guilty, vote for him to get the death penalty. Socrates, it seems is not shocked by this.  So the question to me is clearly: "Did Socrates commit suicide?," in a manner of speaking.

The man is going to be banished.  Not a terrible penalty, and at least he would be alive. But instead he requests this: to be pampered by the government.  He wants a house, food, and protection as provided by the government.  Shortly, he wants to be treated as an Olympian victor. That's absurd.  By the standard of the court, he is a criminal.  Criminal's dont get treated like kings, and Socrates is not stupid enough to think that.  So what is he doing?

Socrate's seems to think that the gods have deemed his the wisest man alive.  As such, it has become his duty to spread his wisdom around the world.  So being exiled elsewhere and forced to pay a fine simply won't do.  So why not just ask to stay and get a harsher punishment, but not death? It seems Socrates is committing suicide.  I think that Socrates simply can not imagine living without philosophizing in Greece.
He says:

Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living

Life, to Socrates is not worth living if not for his philosophy.  He must have it, or he will be dead (regardless of his 'vital signs', so to speak).  So it certainly seems what Socrates has done is to commit suicide.