Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 1, chapter 6, section 8

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[8] Those verbs, however, which terminate in -o alone, if they form the infinitive in e, have the e short; compare lego, dico, curro, with the infinitives, legĕre, dicĕre, currĕre. I admit that in Lucilius we find— “ fervit aqua et fervet: firvit nunc ferverit ad annum.¹
”

The water boils and boil it will; it boils and for a year will boil.

But with all due respect to so learned a man, if he regards fervit as on the same footing as currit and legit, we shall say fervo as we say lego and curro: but such a form has never yet come to my ears.

1 In Book IX.

Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.

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