If you can make do with the layout restrictions of a table, then you can actually produce circles without generating each of them dynamically. The trick is to use only one graphic, which is opaque on the "outside" areas, filled with the color of your page's background, and has a disc-shaped transparent area punched out in the center. If you place this image in a table cell with a background color set, it will give the appearance of a disc filled the table cell's background color.

Makeshifts last the longest.