When they left Circe's island, they followed her advice to go down to Hades to visit Tiresias, who, among other things, warned them not to touch Helios' cattle, but they ignored the warnings:
"[...] but soon as I’d prayed to all the gods who rule Olympus,
down on my eyes they poured a sweet, sound sleep ...
as Eurylochus opened up his fatal plan to friends:
‘Listen to me, my comrades, brothers in hardship.
All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals,
true, but to die of hunger, starve to death—
that’s the worst of all. So up with you now,
let’s drive off the pick of Helios’ sleek herds,
slaughter them to the gods who rule the skies up there.
If we ever make it home to Ithaca, native ground,
erect at once a glorious temple to the Sungod,
line the walls with hoards of dazzling gifts!
But if the Sun, inflamed for his longhorn cattle,
means to wreck our ship and the other gods pitch in—
I’d rather die at sea, with one deep gulp of death,
than die by inches on this desolate island here!’
So he urged, and shipmates cheered again.
At once they drove off the Sungod’s finest cattle—
close at hand, not far from the blue-prowed ship they grazed,
those splendid beasts with their broad brows and curving horns.
Surrounding them in a ring, they lifted prayers to the gods,
plucking fresh green leaves from a tall oak for the rite,
since white strewing-barley was long gone in the ship.
Once they’d prayed, slaughtered and skinned the cattle,
they cut the thighbones out, they wrapped them round in fat,
a double fold sliced clean and topped with strips of flesh.
And since they had no wine to anoint the glowing victims,
they made libations with water, broiling all the innards,
and once they’d burned the bones and tasted the organs—
hacked the rest into pieces, piercing them with spits.
[...]
with her flaring robes Lampetie sped the news
to the Sun on high that we had killed his herds,
and Helios burst out in rage to all the immortals:
‘Father Zeus! the rest of you blissful gods who never die—
punish them all, that crew of Laertes’ son Odysseus—
what an outrage! They, they killed my cattle,
the great joy of my heart ... day in, day out,
when I climbed the starry skies and when I wheeled
back down from the heights to touch the earth once more.
Unless they pay me back in blood for the butchery of my herds,
down I go to the House of Death and blaze among the dead!’
[...]
Yet six more days
my eager companions feasted on the cattle of the Sun,
the pick of the herds they’d driven off, but then,
when Cronian Zeus brought on the seventh day,
the wind in its ceaseless raging dropped at last,
and stepping the mast at once, hoisting the white sail
we boarded ship and launched her, made for open sea.
But once we’d left that island in our wake—
no land at all in sight, nothing but sea and sky—
then Zeus the son of Cronus mounted a thunderhead
above our hollow ship and the deep went black beneath it.
Nor did the craft scud on much longer. All of a sudden
killer-squalls attacked us, screaming out of the west,
a murderous blast shearing the two forestays off
so the mast toppled backward, its running tackle spilling
into the bilge. The mast itself went crashing into the stern,
it struck the helmsman’s head and crushed his skull to pulp
and down from his deck the man flipped like a diver—
his hardy life spirit left his bones behind.
Then, then in the same breath Zeus hit the craft
with a lightning-bolt and thunder. Round she spun,
reeling under the impact, filled with reeking brimstone,
shipmates pitching out of her, bobbing round like seahawks
swept along by the whitecaps past the trim black hull—
and the god cut short their journey home forever.